Episode 0: Light from Darkness
by JTRaccoon715
Summary: Out of darkness, light. Underneath the dust cloud that blocks the sun, it is not all despair. For great power is about to be discovered, heroes made, people changed and a city united. This is the origin story of the Loonatics.
1. Let's Fly Away

**Chapter 1 – Let's Fly, Let's Fly Away**

**Acmetropolis City, 2772. Zero hour.**

Dust clouds approach at close to the speed of sound, way too fast for Rev even with his rocket blades to out run. Like a great tsunami, it knocks the roadrunner over, launching him towards the glass door entrance to the lobby of an office building he'd arrived at to deliver a take away meal, only to be too late. Now, no matter how fast he was, he could not avoid this. His thin and relatively light body crashes into the doors, hitting them hard as the safety glass does not shatter but stays in it's frame, still intact. Rev falls to the ground once the blast stops. The dust pounds him and gets in every crevice in his body, tearing at the near skin tight aerodynamic body suit to show the blue feathers underneath. However, beneath the pain of it all, something remarkable is happening. His genetic code is being changed, being subjected to a strange radiation unlike anything anyone has seen before.

The dust settles, leaving the ground and everything around it covered in lighter tones of brown all the way to the dark browns of dirt and the black of loose stones and grit. Rev opens his eyes now that it is not pounding him any longer. Strangely, his first thought is of the fate of his customer. To his left, the slim and yet well built man is stumbling to his feet, coughing out the dust. Rev swiftly turns around and hears the sound of one of the thick concrete pillars crumbling under the strain, a loose piece of concrete falls out of its place. He has to get out of here. Without even thinking, he rushes over to the man and picks him up before running away to a safe distance in case the building collapses. It's only after he's done this that the building has not collapsed at all, the concrete chunk has not even hit the ground yet.

"Don't worry, you'll be safe here." Rev says before rushing back to the building. He sees the large set of steps to the building coming up and naturally adjusts himself to compensate; only this time, he doesn't touch the ground. He stops outside the building and looks at the same column. It has not crumbled further, the building may just hold itself up. He whizzes inside and around the lobby to check the other pillars, some have a small amount of damage and some are undamaged. He stops back outside of the lobby; were his rocket blades even working the whole time? And did he just fly? Roadrunners can't fly; it's even in the name; they run, not fly. It's so much to take in. In the distance, there's the sound of distant buildings making a thunderous sound as they crash into the bay of Acmetropolis. Rev decides to take a look. Readying himself at the top of the stairs, he tries to run, but instead he flies about 15 metres off the ground, approximately the same height the top of the stairs are from ground level.

The ground is also passing by at a rapid speed. It's only because he looks up that he avoids hitting a building at the end of the street, banking to the right reactively by tilting his arms like an aeroplane. Rev is so fascinated by how he's doing all of this, at the same time he is completely confused. He lifts his shoulders and tilts his arms to try to slow down. It's a shaky stop, but somehow he manages to hover above the street much to the amazement of onlookers down below. Scared of what might happen, he flies away, gaining more and more altitude so he can fly above all of the buildings and not have to worry about hitting one. He stops to hover in the air once again, to check himself again. His first thought is that he has to stop on the ground, otherwise the consequences could be dire if he fell straight out of the sky. On the other hand, this is the freest he has ever felt; he wonders how fast he can go. With no obstacles and the bay ahead of him, he stops hovering and begins to dive dive, pulling up gradually until he's just above the rooftops. Once he's level, he thinks about going as fast as he can.

The burst of orange and red fire from underneath his arms like a phoenix is the becoming the brightest source of light in the sky. The sun is slowly being blacked out, as is the entire sky. Below, the world still looks the same to Rev despite the speed he is travelling at, there is no blur around any point, he can see everything clearly. Once he gets closer to the bay, he can see the devastation. Buildings have fallen on top of other buildings, water racing through the streets, taking cars, debris and people with it. Rev wonders what he can do to help. He can see tens, perhaps hundreds in the water. He slows and drops down lower, he can see the faces of those who are looking up, depending on him to save their lives. Overcome by the occasion, Rev dive bombs and stops before the water and picks out a child, no more than 12, from the water before placing her on the top of a building. He repeats the process nearly 50 times in the space of 2 minutes; but he doesn't stop there. Rev does this for a full 10 minutes, saving nearly 300 people from drowning.

However, the roadrunner is completely exhausted. Despite not physically doing anything, he wasn't flapping his arms, he has barely enough energy to balance with his rocket blades which has become short circuited from being dipped into the water numerous times. Rev looks up briefly to see the faces of those he saved, people of all ages, and they look back to him in shock and awe.

"Who are you?" Someone asks from the crowd.

"Me?" Rev replies. He knows that this question is directed at him, but he is still surprised that someone has asked.

"You saved us all." Another voice from the crowd says gleefully.

"Well that was my intention." Rev replies, much faster than he usually talks.

"What did you say?" Someone asks.

"I, I didn't want to see people drowning and I needed to save them all and somehow I can fly with this weird fire coming out the back like the afterburners on a fighter jet. I don't know how this is happening to me!" Rev says quickly and hysterically. He can't make sense of it all. The occasion has once again overwhelmed him. The crowd in front of him make hush whispers of awe like looking at a fireworks display, Rev turns around to see what it is. It's a brief and yet brilliant beam of yellow from in the distance. Rev thinks this is a missile launch. He wonders who could possibly be fighting Acmetropolis? There is no other city on this planet, no other countries and only one military. He thinks back to the sight of the meteor, maybe there's another meteor that they are trying to shoot down; but why did the military not try to shoot down the first one? Either way, he somehow knows exactly where the flash of light came from.

Rev takes off from the building with his fiery contrail behind him. As he draws closer, a second blast of light comes from the ground and it's coming straight at him. Rev banks left to dodge the blast and looks for a place to land. A third beam of light comes right at him that he dodges easily but it's still a nerve-racking moment. He thinks about flying away because whoever's causing it, it's attacking him, but against that thought, he dives straight down the alleyway, landing on his rocket blades stopping about 3 metres away from a plainly dressed grey furred rabbit who has his eyes shut but it facing him at the same time.

"What do you have your eyes closed?" Rev asks.

"Ugh, can you slow down there doc?" The rabbit asks.

"I'm sorry, I'm just a bit nervous, did you see that light go shooting up into the sky? It nearly hit me twice!" Rev says, not thinking about slowing down his speech at all.

"It's my eyes." The rabbit says, afraid to open them again and destroy the roadrunner from point blank range.

"Can you open them? Maybe I can take a look." Rev asks.

"No, I can't. I'll hurt you." He replies.

"What?" Rev asks, but he starts to connect the dots. "Oh, it's coming from your eyes."

"I don't know what's happened to me." The rabbit says tiredly. "These, beams... are coming right out of my eyes."

"I don't know what's happened to me either." Rev replies. "Somehow I can fly which is weird for a roadrunner because we can't fly and it's really implied in the name…"

"Name?" The rabbit asks, confused at what was said. He interprets it as him asking for his name. "I'm Ace."

"Ace? I'm Rev, nice to meet you." Rev says, shaking the rabbits hand so quickly he nearly takes the arm out of it's socket.

"Woah, easy there."

"Sorry, I'm really scared." Rev replies.

"I'm going to turn around and open my eyes, so don't go in my way." Ace says, turning to face the mock steel wall behind him that was used as a backdrop of the set he was filming on. Rev stands in the same spot and waits. Ace opens his eyes and nothing happens, just as he wanted to. With a sigh of relief, he turns around to look at the roadrunner. He's a kid; he couldn't be older than 18 years old.

"What's with the get up?" Ace asks, referring to his clothing.

"This?" Rev says, pulling at his clothing. "I work as a delivery boy, this stops my feathers from being torn off and my helmets stops me head from cracking open if I fall and the glasses stop the air coming into my eyes which is really helpful now when I'm going really fast."

There's a pause once Rev stops talking.

"Everywhere around the bay's been destroyed by a tsunami, buildings are down like dominos I can't fathom how many have died; probably too many to count at this count but I think I saved, let's see, 286 people from downing." Rev says, rambling at top speed.

"Woah, what's with your…" Ace says, trying to get a closer look at Rev's eyes; they glowed red as he was talking. But as he did that, Ace accidently lets loose his newfound ability directly at Rev from a distance just under 3 metres. If he did this to anyone else, they'd be dead. However, Ace spots Rev, pressed against the concrete wall to his left with fear in his eyes. He hangs his head in shame.

"I'm sorry Rev, that was an accident." Ace says, but the rabbit knows the same thing. Anyone else would be dead in that scenario.

"I hope so, but don't feel bad you just don't know what you're doing. Maybe you should stop trying to look closely at things, maybe that's what's causing lasers to come out of your eyes." Rev explains. Ace doesn't respond to the answer, merely taking on board what sounds like sound advice coming from someone several years younger but much smarter, calmer, knowledgeable and more forgiving than him. He sits on the ground with his legs fully extended in front of him, just trying to take it all in. He looks up at the sky and sees how dark it is becoming before looking back up at Rev, who is taking off his rocket blades in a blur before sitting down next to him.

"What's happened to us?" Rev asks, still overcome by everything and still on edge. "We've developed some kind of super powers. I can fly and you can shoot lasers out of your eyes."

"And you did something when you were talking about saving those people." Ace replies.

"I was counting the people I saved. 1,2,3,4,5…"

"Like, a photographic memory?" Ace asks.

"No I was thinking about where everyone was when I saved them." Rev replies, consciously realising what he was doing. He thinks about his parents and his little brother, he knows exactly where all of them are right now. His eyes glow red again.

"There, you just did it again." Ace replies.

"I know where my family is right now. My dad's in his office, my brother's on the couch and my mother's on the way to go shopping but she's stopped by the edge of the road probably because she's heard the sound from the city and she's probably worrying about me." Rev says. "I'll be back soon, they need to know I'm okay."

"O…"

Ace could even reply before the roadrunner lifted off like a rocket with the fire trail behind him. Ace thinks about trying to look closer at it, but refrains from doing it because he might shoot another blast of light into the sky. Ace rests for a second before getting up from the ground and wondering what to do with himself, he's on his own now as the kid has gone off to his parents. Ace takes one step before he sees Rev fly back down and land right in front of him.

"That was quick." Ace notes confusingly.

"I know, I must have been approaching Mach 1 with the speeds that I was going." Rev exclaims. Ace has a thought, but he quickly figures out a way to disguise it.

"Say, do you know how to get to the university?" Ace asks.

"We're already there." Rev says, picking up Ace before flying out of the alley in a trail of fire.


	2. Science Takes a Back Seat

**Chapter 2 – Science Takes a Backseat**

**Acmetropolis Technology University, 2772, Zero hour.**

Instantly Tech knows what is happening when he sees the rock hurtling through the atmosphere. Picking himself up after the failure of his project, he runs back inside to the university to save himself from the shockwave. He runs through the doorway as the dust riding on the shockwave comes closer before shattering all of the glass windows and glass doors. All the loose furniture form a café in the lobby lifts off the ground. Tables and chairs come hurtling at the coyote, knocking him to the ground just metres from the safety of the back wall. His body is flung across to the left, and hits that wall with the tables and chairs compressing him like a sandwich. This only happens for a few seconds, as the wall itself dislodges from the second floor and falls outward, hitting the ground hard. Academics and other personnel in the building come rushing to help Tech by pulling the debris off of him. When they see his condition, many jump to the conclusion that he's dead.

His legs are badly cut, his right arm has bruises right along it's length from the impact of all the chairs and tables; beneath that, it's broken in several places. His left arm is bruised but other wise okay, his left wrist has been broken as the 180 degree bending back of the fingers of his left hand indicate they have been broke also. Several of his ribs, particularly on the left side, are broken from the impact of hitting the wall. What is most convincing to consider him dead is the back of his skull, completely smashed against the wall. Everyone tries to call for an ambulance, but with no reception, it is of no use. Whilst they are doing this, a strange green aura appears around Tech. Everyone loosens the grip on their phones, wondering what is happening to this dead coyote. Some fear that God himself in intervening; the way his body is moving by itself to repair the damage. It takes about 5 seconds for the process to be complete. At the end, Tech opens his eyes as if he had just woken up. His first thought, 'why is everyone looking at me?'

Tech thinks that he's been unconscious for a few seconds, but he feels 100%. He feels incredibly lucky to have escaped injury considering the objects that hit him; maybe his luck is beginning to turn around. The coyote gets up normally and dusts himself off with everyone else not moving an inch.

"You're alive."

"I am." Tech replies, ready to figure out what parts of the university are damaged and hoping that none of his stuff is on that list.

"You just have to watch this." someone says, taking their phone out to show Tech. "You had this… green aura around you!"

"That's propostero…" Tech says before watching the video in surprise, his eyebrows raised as high as they can be. He takes off his safety glasses and looks at it again. He can't believe the vision he's seeing, but he has to believe; irrefutable evidence is right before his eyes, so he has to find out how. Suddenly, a reinforced concrete support starts to give way, and people are still walking through the exposed gap in the wall!

"No! Stop! It's going to fall!" Tech shouts, holding his hands out to make people stop, but what it does do is launch the same green aura like light from his hands at them. He's afraid of what he's done, so he closes his hands into fists and moves away. However, he notices that the residual green light slowed the descent of the heavy concrete chunk before it hit the ground, luckily not hitting anyone. More chunks begin to fall. Against all of the pressure from everyone else, against pressure from himself knowing that what he is doing is impossible, he tries to do the same thing again. He opens his palms and aims them at them, slowing and even stopping the descent of some of the smaller ones. The structure itself is beginning to collapse, and as much as he tries, he can't stop it from falling, the mass of the object is too much and it falls unaffected by Tech's efforts. The seconds floor crashes on top of the lobby, but because Tech was able to delay the fall for long enough, everyone goes out and survived.

Tech is tired from doing this, he sees it as a failure, the building must be only seconds from a further collapse even though the rest of it is holding for now. Everyone else sees him as a hero, even if Tech sees himself as a failure. Tech tries to lift the fallen floor, to see if he could do it, but to no avail. Everyone waits for the coyote to say something, but Tech is far from being an inspirational leader; he'd like nothing more than the privacy of his room. He moves through the crowd and sees if the central column of the building is still intact, which it is, before running towards the emergency stairs where everyone else is trying to get out. He decides that isn't the best place to go, but he needs to go to somewhere that's private, where no one can see him in this state; but mainly because he wants to know for himself how this works. As everyone is being evacuated out onto the streets in the wake of the aftermath, all the buildings would be empty. Tech waits for the stream of people going down the stairs to decrease before going in the other direction.

The first place he checks is his tiny dormitory on campus, to make sure that it hasn't been destroyed. He's lucky that he did not perform his most recent experiment in his room; the machine he was constructing was too big to fit. Nothing has been taken from his dorm, just the loose items are now on the ground against one wall; the direction the shockwave went. Tech shuts the door to make sure no one can watch what he attempts. He starts out small. Tech opens his right hand and tries to pick up his broken tablet computer from the ground before placing it on his desk.

"Some kind of levitation or telekinesis." Tech notes to himself, looking at his palm for any noticeable changes, of which there are none. He begins to clean up his room lazily by using his new power, lifting things off the ground and putting them off the ground. Once that's done, he tries to lift up the chair, which he does successfully. He knows how to use it and control it, but he feels that this is significant. When it mattered the most, he could not pull it off. In an effort to do away with that thought, he decides to record a video of himself doing it, so he can look back on it later just in case as well as objectively prove that this is happening to him. He takes out his phone and rests it on the desk, facing the ground, where he pushes some objects back onto the floor to repeat the entire process again; except this time he has some empirical evidence to make it more believable to himself. Once done, he checks the video, he sees no irregularities with what he did with what he's seeing. As with the self healing, that's something he ignores for now because telekinesis is enough for him to take in for a year. If he could prove how it works, many scientific accolades would come his way. However, he suspects that the world is a different place. He may not have died today, but certainly many thousands of other have. Tech relaxes back in his chair self reflectingly, thinking how lucky he was; he is the luckiest coyote in the world.

Without warning, his computer turns on automatically. The screen brightens to show a white yellow face with hair rising upwards instead of down, like a giant fan is blowing it upwards from beneath. What's weird are the colours that are coming from background, a whole mixture of faded colours, like those in a set of printer ink cartridges.

"Hello Tech." The computer modulated sounding voice greets. Tech wants to simply cut the power in fear of what's happening, think that someone is coming for him based on what is happening, like an underground conspiracy. "Stay right where you are, the others are coming to find you."

The screen shuts off and Tech's immediate reaction is to do the opposite of what he was instructed to do. He opens his door just enough to see if anyone is coming from down the hallways; they are completely empty. He breaks from cover and runs down the hallway to the stairs and to the ground floor where he opens it wide enough just to see what is happening outside. The police are beginning to restore order at ground level as other emergency services swing into full action to clear debris and save people who are more affected by the meteor than these university academics and students. he watches form behind the door, fearing that he might be recognised and possibly turned over to the police, but that might be a good thing for him considering they could protect him against that mysterious person in his computer. Hopefully it doesn't come to that.

"Do not travel to the bay, an exclusion zone is being set up around the bay at a radius of 5 kilometres." A police officer on a megaphone shouts to everyone around him. "Anyone within this zone will be prosecuted under emergency law."

Tech hangs around to listen for any important information.

"Please remain vigilant, do not leave your valuables unattended."

Tech thinks of his mobile phone, he left that back in his room. He rushes back upstairs again to get it, as he nears his dorm, he hears the voices of two individuals coming out of the stairs from the other side of the hallway.

"I told you, I didn't want to come here."

"Yeah, but what a coincidence that the weird lady on the screen told us we had to come here. I thought you wanted to come here maybe to find a solution to what's happened to us, but in any case this is a great coincidence."

Tech sees the two individuals come out of the stairwell from the other side of the hallway; a rabbit and a roadrunner.

"Are you Tech E. Coyote?" The rabbit asks.

"No, sorry, you're mistaken." Tech replies. He grabs his key card to open the door but simultaneously uses his peripheral vision to see what they are doing. He sees them look at something on their phones.

"Can you tell us where he is?"

"I don't know." Tech replies. In a flash, the bird runs right up to him holding the phone with a picture of Tech's face on it.

"I say he does look a lot like you." Rev comments to the coyote.

"He looks nothing like me." Tech replies, half sarcastically, half seriously. The picture on the phone changes to that woman he saw before, it puts all manner of fears into Tech in that he has been caught lying.

"Tech. This is Rev and Ace. They have been affected in the same but different ways as you have. Together you must find anyone else who has had a similar affliction and unite them all; you can see it in the glowing of their eyes."

The screen changes back to Tech's picture.

"Who is that?" Tech asks.

"No clue." Ace replies.

"She came up on my computer screen, and this is a secure network." Tech explains.

"Some kind of hacker? Huh." Ace asks.

"Maybe but what kind of hacker would know about us?" Rev asks.

"Sorry I lied to you, I don't know who to trust." Tech explains.

"You can trust us." Ace replies. "I'm Ace and that's Rev."

"Let's get inside before anyone sees us." Tech says, inviting them into his room even though the space is tight.

"It's a bit messed up in here." Tech says, alluding to the mess on his desk and a little on the floor. In less than a second, it's all cleaned up by the amazing blur of speed that is Rev.

"I assume that's how you usually have your things set up. Is that okay?" Rev asks.

"Yeah, thanks, Rev." Tech says politely, turning on his computer.

"What are you doing now Tech?" Ace asks.

"I'm getting us a status update, trying to figure out the status of the world currently." Tech says. "This might take a while."

"Why don't you let Rev do it?" Ace asks. "He's got super speed."

"And what do you have?" Tech asks as he gets out of his seat.

"I can shoot lasers out of my eyes." Ace replies candidly, not particularly proud of having to the extent where he would wear it as a badge of honour. he doesn't really want to talk about it. Tech takes a step to be outside of Ace's direct vision.

"Rev, how much computer hacking experience do you have?" Tech asks as Rev types away at the keyboard many times faster than he has ever seen. Before he finishes the question, Rev has already hacked into database containing the raw data from the meteorological service.

"Well I can do it most basic programming languages but I guess you're better than I am." Rev says, getting out of the chair to stand next to Ace.

"Right." Tech says in confusion before analysing what Rev has gotten for him.

"The meteor impact was measured at a 5.2 on the Richter scale from approximately 20 kilometres away from the epicentre. The tsunami was 40 metres high. Strange, negligible thermal radiation detected." Tech notes. "The meteor mustn't have been travelling fast enough, relatively speaking, to burn anything like newspaper, clothes, anything flammable."

"Thanks for the nightmares." Ace comments.

"There are 5 aspects the damage caused by a meteor. Thermal radiation; heat, which didn't happen; seismic activity comes next. The next two parts, the dust and the shockwave come next followed by a tsunami as the meteor impacted in the water. Anything on the coast would have been obliterated, there would be almost no chance." Tech explains.

"But what does that mean for us?" Ace asks.

"It doesn't mean anything other than we survived." Tech explains.

"Okay doc, about finding these others. How do we find them? If there are others." Ace asks.

"My guess is as good as yours." Tech explains. "This is not within the realms of known science, yet."

"Rev, maybe you could fly around the city and see if anyone is like us, she said something about glowing eyes." Ace explains.

"That would be a great idea but by my calculations it would take days to do any proper search and since I can only fly for about 10 minutes at a time so far as I know it's not going to be quick enough." Rev explains.

"Tech, can you try and figure out if there's a way to track down people like us? I'll be your test subject." Ace instructs.

"Okay, but maybe it's possible to lose these… powers we have?" Tech asks.

"Another meteor's going to have come down on Acmetropolis for that to happen." Ace replies confidently.

"I mean, If I want to do a detailed analysis, some of the equipment is going to irradiate you. I'm not sure if it might reverse the process." Tech explains.

"Then do something that won't." Ace says. After a short consideration, Tech thinks of an idea.

"Okay. Rev, How about you try the major areas where people will be congregating; train stations, schools, stadiums, public landmarks. Just do it for as long as you can." Tech instructs.

"I've already mapped out the most efficient and effective route." Rev explains before bursting out the door at lighting speed.

"Does he have a… G.P.S. system inside his head or something?" Tech asks.

"You're the scientist." Ace replies.

"True, but like I said, unexplained." Tech explains. "I'll see if some of the biomechanical equipment is intact so we can test this."

"Thanks doc." Ace replies.

"I may have a P.H.D., but I don't like being called doc." Tech replies.


	3. I Hear You

**Chapter 3 – I Hear You**

**University of Acmetropolis**

The roof begins to crumble above, sending the large chunks down below onto the wooden seating that crash straight through to the floor. Everyone with the energy and chance to run does so, that means everyone except for the one who has just been cruelly rejected into the cheerleading squad and on the floor in despair. Most of her energy has been spent on doing the routine, and Lexi is now on the ground with hardly anytime to leave the building as it crumbles in front of her. Strangely, the roof has only cracked open over one localised area, but no one else notices because they've all run for their lives. A strange light builds from the rear entrance up at the back of the hall that brightens considerably until it breaks down the door and blinds everything in it's path. It stays at full brightness for only 1 second before it dissipates and the room returns to normal brightness. A small coating of dust and small rocks has lightly covered the ground in front of the door as the shock wave powers it's way outwards from the epicentre.

The first thing she notices as the light fades away is that there is a loud ringing in her ears like after leaving a deafening rock concert.

"Let's get out of here."

It came from in front of her, where the fold out table was set up but further away, she looks that way but there's no one there.

"That was too close, we nearly died."

A different voice but from the same direction; she gets up slowly, feeling shaken and full of adrenaline which makes her feel edgy.

"Look on the bright side, at least tryouts are finished. I don't have to deal with anymore wannabe losers."

It seems to flick a switch inside Lexi that takes her from confusion over how she can hear all these things to briefly being angry; she knew that the others liked her routine, but for whatever reason, the one who's ultimately in charge did not. This manifests itself in a raw and unfocused stream of pink that hits the wall on her right and punches a hole in it that a truck could fit through.

"What was that?"

"Aftershock."

Lexi turns around, expecting some kind of military personnel to be behind her holding an energy weapon of some description; but there is no one there but her. Suddenly, an evacuation siren blares out.

"Evacuate to emergency rally points immediately!"

It sounds like atomic bombs are going off in her ears, the sound is so deafening that she looses her balance and falls back down. When she falls, her ears flop in front of her face, too pained to stand up. She puts her fingers inside them to block out the noise and still the pain is excruciating, it make virtually no difference. However, she sees these, weird pink rings rising up from the top of her head and up to the top of her ears before disappearing into nothing. Lexi stands back up and, with her fingers still in her ears, runs to the exit in front of her at the top of the stairs. As she gets to the top, the sound of lots of idle chit chat as everyone stands outside in the open becomes unendurable. She can hear every single person talking right at once as if they were standing right next to her. People's heads begin to turn when they see the hypnotic pink rings lifting themselves around her ears. She can hear what they are saying about her even though it is impossible to pick out the voices individually. The consensus grows; one of astonished surprise. Ashamed, she runs away, but the sounds what everyone says stay with her.

The ringing in her ears begins to subside as her brain filters out the continuous sound as trash. She takes her fingers out of her long ears but the sound of everyone talking is not getting any quieter; it's still the same noises. She pulls down one of her ears to looks at the phenomenon herself, but she lets go just as the pink ring is about to touch her hand fearing that it might be dangerous to touch. At the moment, all she wants is a corner to be in, fearing how much of a freak she has become with this weird thing that's happened; the self-pitying mope extends to every part of her she deems is 'wrong'; being everything. Knowing that the university is likely to be deserted, she heads back inside and finds the empty female toilets with a giant mirror along the wall behind the basins with which she can look at it for herself. The world condenses solely into noise, which makes her lie on the ground for what feels like hours. She can't take this noise anymore.

Suddenly, the sounds of everyone outside cease, as do the pink rings. She thinks about how she can't hear the sounds as she did before, and just like that they come back again. She then does the opposite, finally something positive! At least this can be controlled. Now that it is under control, it means she can listen even more clearly to her own derogatory thoughts of herself. She slumps tiredly over the basin and wipes her lipstick off with the back of her hand before wanting to get out of this ridiculously trashy outfit she has on and back into something less gaudy and into something more normal. She runs out of the toilets and towards the changing rooms where her clothes are located. As she turns down one of the corridors, she sees one of the lecturers with a high visibility vest on and a yellow cap that had the word 'fire marshal' on the top in black.

"Hey!" He shouts to grab her attention. "You need to evacuate!"

Lexi continues on her path with the fire marshal chasing after her.

"It's not safe! Evacuate now!" He shouts before signalling on the radio that someone is still inside. Lexi rushes into the female changing rooms and rushes to her locker to quickly do the combination lock. As she does it, the ground and building shakes violently, which causes her to lose touch with the lock. The shaking becomes stronger and stronger with each second and suddenly a large piece of concrete falls through the roof and crushes the wooden and steel bench running along the middle. Lexi runs backwards to the back of the room as more debris comes through the roof near the one side that runs next to the hall. The roof itself to the changing rooms now begins to cave in, starting from the far side and it's working it's way towards her. With no where else to run, and the objects inside being crushed like bugs, almost certain death awaits her with the few seconds she has left. This day has been a total display of freakiness and failure, and the world has decided to top it off by ending her life prematurely; she's really doesn't like that.

The vibrations from the shaking get louder and louder as the room gets darker and darker, punctuated by tiny fragments of visible light from the outside. Suddenly a tremendous flash of light appears inside, which she imagines to be what flashes before your eyes just before death. However, that light is accompanied by a massive explosion of great power and ferocity that blows the falling building debris away like flowing air does to dust. It takes a few seconds to realise that she is not dead and that the building has not crushed her to death. She sees through a cloud of dirt and debris that the gym in front of her has been totally destroyed, as are the buildings to her immediate left and right. Through the cloud that obscures her view, there's a burning red light in the distance that's travelling at some speed which she thinks is some far away rocket. But the fire is coming to towards her and grows brighter and larger as it does so; the world is trying it's very best to write her off. An eruption of pink energy leaps off into the sky towards this streak of flame; the two do not collide, instead, the flame turns out to be someone who lands right in front of her.

"No time to explain." He says fearfully before ripping her from the bonds of gravity and into the sky.


	4. Information

**Chapter 4 – Information**

Ace and Tech walk into a small biomechanical lab that's about twice the size of Tech's tiny room. It consists of a treadmill, breathing machine and other devices used to assess the capacity of the body.

"Wear this vest, it'll measure your blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen intake," Tech explains, handing a skin tight sleeveless vest to Ace.

"I'll have to take my shirt off." Ace warns.

"What? Are you body conscious?" Tech asks.

"Whatever." Ace replies, flinging his jacket off before taking the shirt off and putting the undershirt on.

"Let's see, you're normal as far as your vitals are concerned." Tech explains as he grabs a pair of scissors out of a draw. "I'm going to need to do a DNA analysis to see if anything has changed there."

Ace rubs his hand through his to see if a loose hair will come off. He grabs it and presents it to Tech. But Tech has a syringe ready

"A hair won't have your DNA from after the meteor. Here, this won't hurt a bit." Tech says as Ace offers his arm to have blood drawn out of it. Tech grabs the sample and puts it into the analyser.

"Why does it need to be from after?" Ace asks.

"If my theory is correct, our powers result from genetic mutations caused by the lack of thermal radiation from the meteor." Tech explains. "It's not complete, but it's something to start with. This will take a minute, so I want to hear about you, what do you do?"

"I'm an actor." Ace replies.

"Actor?" Tech replies. "I haven't seen you in anything have I?"

"Only if you're up late at night. I was in a TV show where I was the supporting actor, and I had some ideas of my own about how it should go. The director gave me one episode to try my ideas. It had less talking and more of this…" Ace explains as he demonstrates his fighting with punches and kicks to the air as Tech watches on. "Long story short, it was the most popular episode."

"That's all good, your acting is average at best, but I doubt whether those moves will be effective in real combat." Tech replies.

"What are you saying?" Ace replies.

"You know… super powers… super heroes." Tech says, trying to get the rabbit to latch onto his argument himself.

"I don't understand." Ace replies.

"We have superpowers." Tech says, stating the obvious.

"I don't like the sound of 'superpowers', let's just call them powers." Ace replies.

"You don't want to be a superhero?" Tech asks.

"I don't know if I'll even have to use it." Ace replies. "Lasers are only going to either destroy something or hurt someone. You have something that's useful, it's going to make building stuff a whole lot easier. I know the difference between what's real and what's not. In the real world, you don't have supervillains with weird and crazy plots of mass destruction, you don't have superheroes that save the girl and brush aside evil like it was dirt. It just doesn't happen. There's the law and then there are criminals, the scale's not that wide and the line between them is not well defined."

"I didn't expect such an articulated response." Tech replies.

"But, if we actually have to fight someone or something. They won't even know what hit them!" Ace replies.

"How can you be… these separate personalities?" Tech asks, he realises the answer just as Ace says it to him.

"I'm an actor, I can be anyone." Ace casually replies. "I can suppress this power if I never have to use it, or if the world is going to end tomorrow, I'll be the hero."

"I wish I have your confidence." Tech replies.

"I just look confident, that's acting, really I'm scared about this as much as you, not just the powers but the meteor as well. Think about it, thousands of people have probably died with zero chance of survival with all the buildings that have been destroyed. And in the middle of it all is us who have acquired strange powers; huh, the writers would have had a field day with that one."

Tech moves back to look at the computer screen which is displaying an error message. Tech gets around the error message and gets the results to be shown anyway. It shows Ace's genome with several parts missing and treated as a white blank space amongst the dashes of black.

"Should it look like that?" Ace asks.

"It's exactly what I thought. The computer can't map out your DNA because it's been altered in a way that it can't recognise the changes. In these areas are where the changes have happened." Tech explains. "Since the changes are genetic, the chances that the radiation given off by an MRI, CT or X-ray machine can reverse the process, are zero." Tech explains.

"I'm not sure what to say." Ace says.

"My interest is not to figure out why, but how. I can see why someone with such a dangerous power would want to get rid of it." Tech explains.

"It's not that. I'm just afraid of using it. I nearly killed Rev; his super speed saved his life." Ace explains, coming to terms with what he has done. The shame fills him from the tops of his ears to the soles of his feet.

"Oh, I, didn't know." Tech replies, made uncomfortable as much as Ace is.

"I can't look at anything too closely, otherwise it sets off." Ace explains. As Tech opens the draw to get a fresh syringe to do the same DNA test on himself.

"Whatever it is, I bet that the person on the computer has the answers but isn't willing to tell us. I say we find a way to contact her and get her to fill in the gaps." Tech says as he draws some blood from himself and places the vial into the analyser.

"Where would we start? She could be anywhere." Ace says.

"Where she is, that's not important, what matters is that we find anyone else with powers." Tech explains

A computer screen turns on by itself and displays that same mysterious woman as if on cue. Tech becomes suspicious that they are being spied on every single second.

"Hey, lady, are you going to tell us what's happening to us?" Ace asks forcefully.

"In time, Ace."

"That's not good enough" Ace replies angrily. "You're being unfair on us. If you know so much, why don't you tell us? It may be easy for you to hide behind that computer, but we're the ones with the new powers and it seems like you know exactly what's going on. It sounds like you're just going to use us for your own purposes, so unless you come clean I don't see why we should listen to you!"

This makes the strange woman pause and think for a moment.

"Okay Ace, go to the electronics shop on block AH18. There I will explain more." She instructs.

"But that's…"

The computer screen turns off.

"The roads are going to be jammed or blocked off." Ace says to Tech.

"Maybe I can help with that. I've been part of a team that's developing a personal transportation system for the military." Tech explains. "Hopefully it's still intact. I'll be a minute."

Tech leaves the room to find what he is looking for, leaving Ace alone by himself. The computer screen turns back on.

"Ace, these are going to be difficult times for Acmetropolis. Something has been bestowed onto you that many people would give anything for, power of which no one on this planet has ever had. No matter what your opinion is of me, I need you to…"

"Here." Tech says, coming back into the door holding something that looks like a metallic dark grey backpack with two joysticks extending out on small angular metal rods. "Use this, it's in the final stages of testing so all the kinks have been ironed out."

Ace is looking back at the computer screen, which turned off when Tech entered the room. He turns to see what Tech has brought him.

"A jetpack?" Ace asks.

"We called it something else, but yeah, it's a jetpack." Tech explains. "Left trigger controls the thrust and the right controls the flaps for direction. It's easy to fly, at least that's what the test pilots are saying."

"Right." Ace replies. "You stay here in case Rev comes back."

"It wouldn't matter, Rev probably knows where we all are right now." Tech says.

"Yeah." Ace replies casually.

"Oh." Tech remembers. "Press the button on top the left stick to extend the wings, otherwise you won't be able to fly."

"Got it." Ace replies. "Left for power, right for direction; I'll go to the roof."

"Bye." Tech says as Ace leaves, he's sure that Ace will master it quickly as he did himself. He looks back at the screen for his own DNA results, which have come up differently to what Ace's showed before. The areas where Ace's DNA was not visible are now visible as these warped lines instead of the dead straight horizontal lines the 'normal' areas have. Whilst Tech wonder's about the scientific implications, Ace heads via the stairs to the rooftop and stops to press the button to extend the wings. They extend out quickly about a metre wide either side with a small slanted wingtip at each end.

"Okay, Slowly." Ace reminds himself. He gently grips the thruster and slowly increases the power. At about 40% power, he begins to feel light as he slowly moves upwards. As soon as he leaves the ground, he pulls back on the thrust and hops back down onto the ground. Ace tries the right joystick to familiarise himself with the controls. Once he feels comfortable, he summons up a burst of courage to push the left stick forward so that he flies vertically up into the air. Confidently, he pushes the thruster to 100% and he shoots up like a rocket briefly before he dials the power back to slow his rate of ascent. Ace then pushes the right stick forward to level off and fly like Rev was doing. For half a minute, he turns the right stick in various positions to try and see what the flight characteristics are before he heads towards his destination.

Below, however, is the destruction, the panic, the orderly chaos of law enforcement trying their best to keep the general public calm. Some of the less well-built buildings have collapsed entirely and debris has fallen onto the street. He thinks that every emergency service has to be in action right now; police keeping order, fire crews battling fires and rescuing trapped civilians, paramedics treating people of their injuries. But who does one call when your complaint is that you've developed super powers? It seems that you don't call them, but they call you.

Landing is going to be the tricky part; he knew that just as he took off. He decreases the throttle and tilts the right stick downward to lose altitude. He lines himself with a street and dives in until he's about 5 metres off the ground. He then tries to figure out how exactly to land. With his destination approaching, he decreases the throttle even more and he begins to go lower and lower. Quickly he pulls back up; that's not how to do it. He gains some more height then, bravely, he turns off the throttle completely so he can glide to the ground as slowly as possible. Even so, it's going to be a difficult landing. He pulls up a tiny bit to wash off as much speed as he can before going in to land. He lands on his feet and instantly starts running to match the speed he was going in the air in order to literally hit the ground running. Once he gets his running under control, he slows down to a stop; it was seriously nervy stuff, but it was such a rush, the kind he could never get when acting out similar scenes on the set. With a touch of a button, the wings retract and he stands back normal after recovering his breath. He walks off the street and turns around to walk to his destination.

The streets around here seem to be remarkably barren, no cars, no people out on the streets; Ace wonders what has happened here. The buildings are not destroyed, at least not on the outside, but the eerie silence is what is most troubling to Ace. He's worried that there might be an ambush, like in the countless movies and TV show's he's seen. He does not need to remind himself however that this is real and really happening to him. Without seeing a single other living soul, he finds the place he was instructed to go to; this store looks like it hasn't been open for a while. He tries the front door, but finds that it's locked. So he digs into his wide-ranging memory of movie moves and elbows the glass paned front door so he can open the door from the inside.

"Intruder alert!" A siren blares as a security trap drops down from the roof to paralyse the rabbit. However, in response to the surprising quick movement of the device, his eyes are drawn towards it and in the darkened room he has to look deeper in order to see it. As a result, his laser vision blasts the trap off it's mounting and stops the siren.

"Woah, I need to able to control this real fast." Ace comments to himself as he steps through where the glass pane was and into the shop selling antique bits of late 27th and early 28th century junk. Ace stays on his toes just in case any other traps are in store. He walks through to the back, where there are a lot of hologram machines; all of which turn on when Ace steps into that particular area.

"Hello Ace."

The hologram projectors all light up with faded rainbows all flaring up to the roof like columns of light. Ace doesn't respond to the question, he doesn't know what to respond with.

"My name is Zadavia, there is not much I can tell you, as I am hiding in exile and can't risk revealing my location. You have to what listen to what I have to say and trust that I know what I am doing." Zadavia pleads with Ace.

"How can I trust you?" Ace asks.

"I'll make you a deal." Zadavia offers.

"Let's hear it."

"Even though I have only had my eyes on you since the meteor struck, I can already tell you a lot about you. You portray heroes in the movies, and now is your chance to do the same in the real world. The powers you have are a tremendous gift which, in the wrong hands, can wreak untold devastation. That is why I am trying to make sure that this does not happen, otherwise Acmetropolis will be littered with supervillains and no one to stop them. I will make you and anyone else you can rally to your cause, heroes. I have enormous wealth that can give you the proper standing that you will require in order to gain the support of the people and the government." Zadavia explains.

"But Zadavia, that's corruption." Ace replies.

"It's not about bribing them, but winning them over, and that will take time." Zadavia replies.

"With what?"

"When they realise that their forces are inadequate, and when they realise that you and anyone else are, that's when it will happen." Zadavia answers.

"How am I supposed do that?" Ace asks.

"That, I can't tell you, nor anyone else can. But perhaps this gift will help you." Zadavia says. Ace looks around in the artificially illuminated room for anything.

"I don't see it." Ace says confusingly.

"It's right in front of you, look down."

Ace looks downwards and sees a small rectangular object with a circular button on the side.

"What is it?" Ace asks cautiously.

"Hold it out in front of you and press the button."

Ace picks it up in his right hand and fully extends his arm with the object pointed vertically towards the roof. He presses the button, expecting something to happen. What he sees is a thin metal blade extend out down to the ground, pierced through one of the holographic projectors.

"Whoops." Ace says in surprise and embarrassment. Zadavia chuckles at this accidental failure. Ace lifts the sword out of the broken electronics and lifts the blade out to inspect it in the faded rainbow light surrounding him.

"A sword?" Ace asks. "It's a little… weak?"

"Why do you say that?"

"I mean, if I was to take on some bad guys, I wouldn't pick a sword; sure, it looks cool, but surely a fusion cannon would be more powerful and effective." Ace replies, knowing that there is going to be a comeback at the end of this; where he realises how wrong his initial statement will be.

"In the right hands, it holds more power than even what you have right now." She replies.

"I don't know if that's possible, I don't even know how to properly use a sword." Ace says bemusingly.

"That all depends on what you do with it." Zadavia replies. "When you prove yourselves to the world, I will make you worthy of your position. Zadavia, out."

Ace exasperatingly looks at all of the dormant holographic projectors.

"Why do you have to be so cryptic? Can't you just tell me what's going on?!" Ace shouts to the room, wondering if she'll respond. She doesn't, so in retaliation he takes the sword with both hands and swings it at the closest projector, slicing it easily. He moves onto the next one, and the next one and continues on until he has displayed enough anger at being kept in the dark. He pauses to reflect on the damage he did with the sword and how easily he did it; maybe she was at least right with one thing. He presses the button to retract the sword into it's handle and carefully puts it into his pocket, making sure that the button is not accidentally pressed. The flight back to the university was a little bit easier this time, although the landing was still as nerve racking as before; a balancing act of speed and altitude and the awkward running steps he has to make in order to stop himself on the ground. As there are still people loitering around AcmeTech, someone people question what this plainly dressed rabbit with a jet pack is doing flying around here. They are driven towards him, to ask him the very basic questions: What are you doing? Where did you get that jet pack? It's something that Ace wants to get away from.

"Sorry sir, this building's near to collapse, it's unsafe to go inside." A police officer says, stopping Ace from going inside even after witnessing his somewhat extravagant entrance.

"But…" Ace readies an explanation, however he is tapped on the back by Rev to get his attention.

"Ace."

"Hey." Ace replies before turning back to the much taller officer. "Sorry for disturbing you."

The two of them walk away through the crowd as Rev explains the situation.

"I found someone else although she's a little shaken up and despondent and worried about what's happening. We tried to calm her down, but we couldn't do anything because between me and Tech we're not the best at this kind of stuff so maybe you could try." Rev explains quickly.

"Okay, where are we...?" Ace asks as they get to a side street where Tech is standing. It appears that Lexi is making a concerted effort to not look deliberately shocked at who is coming with Rev.

"Ace?" She asks towards the other rabbit, seemingly lifting her spirits.

"You know Ace?" Tech asks in surprise.

"It's kind of a long story." Lexi replies. "He's something of a legend at the primary school I went to."

"We can talk about that later." Ace says calmly to everyone before turning to Tech. "Have we been kicked out?"

"I'm afraid so, they searched the building. But I managed wipe clean the research I did, I can easily replicate it later. What did you find out?" Tech asks.

"Nothing much, she's playing her cards very close to her chest." Ace replies.

"Who's she?" Lexi asks.

"This weird lady who calls herself Zadavia with weird moving hair and hypnotic lighting who seems to know all about us and what's happening except she's not telling us." Ace answers. "She gave me this sword."

Ace takes the sword out of his pocket to show to the group.

"You needed that a lot more a long time ago." Lexi replies, the confidence is building in her. No longer is she moping around about her new condition, the charismatic leader that is Ace is the perfect person to help her through this.

"Maybe, maybe not. But I guess that I need this now, and I need to figure out how to use it." Ace replies as he packs it away back into his pocket. "We need to find a place… not to hide, but like, be in private."

"That's going to be difficult." Rev explains. "There will be a state of emergency declared soon and there's even a chance that martial law will be in place soon if things get out of hand so our best is that we go to someone's house and act like normal."

"Rev's right." Ace concludes. "We'll go to my place."

"How far away is it?" Rev asks.

"It's far away from here." Ace replies. "It's several districts away."

"Then we may need to find an easier way than walking." Lexi adds.

"Do you have any more of these jetpacks?" Ace asks Tech.

"Yes, but they're inside the university in a securely locked room." Tech explains. "I'm the only one of us who can get into that room."

"Um, where's Rev?" Ace asks. Quickly, he arrives behind them holding a jetpack in his hands and one on his back.

"I didn't know if there were sizes or not so I just grabbed the first two that I saw." Rev explains, handing them out to Tech and Lexi; of course, he does not need one for himself. Tech realises that he has to begin to throw out some of the assumptions he has made about the others.

"Okay, are these even safe?" Lexi says.

"Don't worry, these have been properly tested; even Ace has used it twice." Tech explains.

"Yeah, but he's Ace. He can do anything." Lexi replies.

"Don't worry." Tech tries to reassure her again, but he is not empathetic or subtle enough to do the job. So Ace tries to do something.

"There's always walking." Ace says jokingly.

Upon hearing this response, she knows that the persona he had when she knew of him is still there.

"Boy I really want to hear the story of what happened between you and her." Rev says in excitement. "You go to the place and I'll keep searching."

Rev flies away to look for more people that have changed.

"But, how will he find where we're going? We didn't even tell him where we're going." Lexi asks.

"G.P.S., he knows where we all are." Ace explains.

"Kind of freaky, and an invasion of privacy." Lexi notes.

"Does he really strike you as the kind of person who'd spy on people? He's just a kid." Ace replies.

"I guess not." Lexi replies.

* * *

><p><strong>(512/14): I apologise about the late uploads. Amongst other things, I have been spending most of my free time designing a Loonatics Unleashed shirt which I hope to get printed in a few days. That has taken up most of my time of the past few days. Thanks to all of you for your continuing support.**


	5. Black Out

**Chapter 5 – Black Out**

"Ahhhhhhhhhh." Duck shouts after lurching forward, waking up on the ground near to the pool where he was working. He looks around him for anything that has happened.

"I'm not dead!" Duck congratulates himself. "It's a miracle!"

Duck looks slightly ahead of him and sees the rubble and devastation around him. The giant 3-tiered pool is nothing but a soggy ruin as it sits in pieces around the grassy backyard area of this elite relaxation club in the heart of Acmetropolis. Where the rich and powerful gathered to unwind from their lives, which are a diverse range of individuals. The clubhouse itself, mostly filled with large wall bearing glass windows, have all shattered, meaning the building is barely recognisable. The exterior wall, however, looks to be undamaged. It was constructed to military standards out of reinforced concrete that went about as far into the ground as it went above. He stands up and looks around at what has happened.

"So much destruction." He comments to himself, and then he makes a life-altering thought.

"Wait a second." He realises out loud. "I remember I was over here, and now I'm over here."

Duck walks about 10 metres to his right to stand in where he remembers he was before that blinding flash of light.

"Hmm." He thinks to himself, trying to come up with a conclusion. "Oh forget it."

He turns around to the large building that has been destroyed and walks towards it, some of it's more valuable objects are still intact, and no one is watching. He double checks that indeed no one is watching before helping himself to tiny trinkets that he can fit in the pockets of his board shorts. Duck always wanted to be rich and powerful, now he can partly fulfil the first part of that equation if that's even possible. He's too busy helping himself to all these objects that he is unaware that the police and fire crews have been on the site this whole time, looking for survivors.

"Stop, thief!" One officer shouts towards Duck.

"I've got to get out of here." Duck nervously comments to himself. He puts his hands up from his pockets and above his head. The last he saw of those officers was the surprised look on their faces. Now he is on the other side of the wall on the grounds of the opposite building.

"Don't sh…" Duck begins to shout, but he realises that no one is around; no officers, no fire crews, no one else.

"Did I just black out?" He asks himself. "I need to know how I got out of that."

He checks his pockets to make sure that the loot is still there.

"Where to go?" Duck asks himself before deciding to take all of the things out of his pockets and dump them into the rubbish bin before running away.

"It's okay. Prison isn't that bad." Duck rationalises to himself in fear of what he has done. He runs out of the building complex and out onto the street where he finds that the world is in a state of disorder. Many buildings are demolished and rubble has poured out onto the street. People are trying to dig out the rubble for various reasons whilst others stand and watch whilst talking to those who they have experienced this event with. Duck has no one to do that with, but he is more concerned about what to do now.

"Okay, the world is ending." Duck explains to himself. "What do you do when the world is ending besides panicking? More panicking!"

Duck puts his hands on his head and walks hunched across the street, seeing the world seemingly ending right before his eyes. He is reacting far more outwardly than those around him, but that is his demeanour. This attracts the attention of other people, which causes Duck to turn down the volume on his concerns.

"I need to get supplies before they all run out." He says to himself. The nearest supermarket is not far away. So Duck runs along the street towards that destination but discovers that the police have already placed themselves outside in order to stop people rushing in and looting all of the items.

"Okay, What else is there to do?" Duck asks to himself. "I need to… um. I didn't think of this earlier. You see all this in the movies but when it really happens all that just goes out of the window. Okay, how about pretending that the world isn't ending? Then after I finished work, I would go home. That's it."

Duck now has some sort of direction he wants to go in. He takes a few strides to start walking down the destroyed street. Suddenly, he disappears from sight and reappears on a different, busier street. Duck continues to walk unaffected by his rapid transportation, he takes one step before he realises that he has 'blacked out' again. Other people notice him suddenly appearing from the street and are looking at him weirdly.

"Oh my goodness, it happened again." Duck says crazily.

"Did you just appear in front of me?" A passer by asks, with nothing better to do.

"Yes!" Duck says, grabbing him by his coat. "And I don't know how I got here!"

People start to crowd around or at least take notice of this disturbance; some of them being police officers who are keen to keep order in the general public during this disastrous period.

"What's the problem?" They ask, not knowing of Duck's earlier crime.

"Um, nothing officers." Duck replies. However, the monitoring system on the officer's helmets are scanning the faces of everyone around them to catch people who are on are added to a wanted list, making it easier to identify criminals whilst on the streets. Duck's face comes up, so they immediately move to arrest him. They hold Duck firmly in place and place a set of handcuffs over his wrists.

"You're under arrest for theft duck."

"How do you know my name?" Duck replies, but they are uninterested in answering the question. Duck is placed into the rear of a police vehicle and it flies off into the increasingly dark day.


	6. Facing the Reality

**Chapter 6 – Facing the Reality**

The flight across the city was more like a learning curve, especially for Lexi who has never flown with a jet pack. So they flew slowly just so she could keep up until she was confident enough to speed up. The trip took over half an hour, an amount of time that Tech didn't decide to disclose that they would be dangerously close to being completely empty of fuel and would have to activate the emergency parachute stored inside each of them. The landing was similarly scary for Lexi and Ace to the extent that he knew what was going to happen. Tech, meanwhile, landed as it was designed to; vertically, which makes him look slightly like a show off. They come to the lobby of a large apartment building that is virtually untouched by the meteor's damage because of it's distance away from the epicentre.

"So this is what the great and powerful Ace has ended up as." Lexi comments. Tech is becoming incredibly curious about what has happened between them.

"Being an actor is not as glamorous as it looks; at least when you're not at the top." Ace replies. He walks up to the door and enters in the entry code, once done they walk inside. They see a sign taped on the elevator, which says 'elevator unsafe'.

"Which floor do you live on?" Lexi asks.

"The 19th." Ace replies. "It's not that hard, I've done it lots of times."

"Yeah but..." Lexi begins to complain, but Ace knows exactly what she was going to say.

"Let's go, if you spend less energy complaining about it and more energy doing it, it will be easier." Ace replies, opening the door to let the others through. Lexi knows that what Ace has said is right; he may not be the smartest or most intelligent, however he seems to know what to do or say at any given moment. The three of them begin their trek to the top of the stairs. Half of the way up, it's not Lexi that's getting tired, but Tech.

"You two can keep going, I'll catch up later." Tech says with his leg aching from all this intense exercise.

"Nah, we'll wait." Ace says. "We've got time."

"Don't let me hold you back." Tech replies.

"If we're going to work together then we have to be together." Ace replies.

"I'm confused, why do we have to be together?" Lexi asks.

"We've all acquired powers of some kind and she wants us to become like this team of superheroes." Ace casually explains.

"What?" Lexi exclaims. "Really?"

"I'm in the dark as much as all of us, Tech, you okay?" Ace asks.

"Yeah, I'll keep going."

Tech feels like he doesn't want to fit the stereotypical mould of being all brains and no body. He makes it his personal mission to ensure that he can get to the top without stopping again. Through the pain and aching in his legs as the lactic acid builds in his thighs, they make it to the 19th floor. Tech envies how Ace still seems to have the same spring in his step as he did at the very bottom, like he doesn't get fatigued. With a fingerprint scanner for a lock, he opens up the door to his tiny apartment. 36 square metres of home.

"It's going to be cramped." Ace says. "I'll clean up the place a bit."

The apartment itself is not very messy but he does it out of courtesy. Tech thinks the place is clean enough when compared to his desk and his own place.

"Ace, it's fine." Tech tells him.

"I've got to get this done." Ace says, placing some scraps in the bin before washing his hands. "So, I think we have to figure out what powers each of use have and figure out how to control them."

"You're so casual about this." Lexi notes. "How can you be like that?"

"Lexi, don't do anything rash. Don't do anything that might trigger your powers here. We have to stay calm and I'm not being casual, I'm taking this very seriously. So… just be calm and tell us what you think you might have."

"You make it sound like a disease." Lexi notes.

"Okay, how should we talk about our powers?" Ace asks. Lexi tries to think of another way to express the same question but fails to materialise an answer. There is no other way to talk about them.

"Whatever, continue." Lexi says.

"How about I start?" Ace says. "I've got lasers coming out of my eyes, Tech."

"I can move ferrous objects and also self healing." Tech says, coming to terms with his own powers as well; the main one he's usually called upon is his massive intellect but he doesn't regard that as a superpower. The two of them wait for Lexi to explain what she has, she hesitates, so Ace fills in for Rev to give her more time.

"And Rev's got super speed, can fly and can track anyone at any time." Ace says.

They wait some more for Lexi.

"I've got… super hearing." Lexi says awkwardly.

"That's great." Ace says, but he senses that she's ashamed of it.

"And I think I blew up the changing rooms at university." Lexi replies. Ace and Tech become very surprised and fear for their safety to some degree; the person who seems to have the most destructive power has the least control of themselves. This makes Ace want to appease her in case he does something that offends her, meaning they won't to keep her under control.

"Okay." Ace simply replies.

"I need to get out of this skimpy outfit." Lexi replies.

"Sure, take whatever clothes you need." Ace says.

"Do your clothes even fit me?"

"Maybe they're a little big, but until Rev gets back, it's what we've got." Ace replies, hoping that it's enough to satisfy her.

"I'll take a look." Lexi says, moving to where she thinks Ace's wardrobe would be. Both Tech and Ace are still slightly on edge, they watch every movement she makes just in case something perilous happens. She opens the first cupboard and analyses Ace's collection of clothes. She picks out a faded pink shirt and pair of long black pants before heading to the bathroom to change in private.

"How long do you reckon Rev's going to be out there for?" Ace asks to Tech.

"I don't know, I don't know how long he can fly for." Tech replies.

"But running and flying at those speeds for half an hour, don't you think it's a bit much?" Ace replies.

"I don't know what else we can do, he could be anywhere in the city. Maybe he's taking a rest." Tech replies.

"Or maybe something bad's happened to him, burnt out maybe." Ace says.

"You're worried about him." Tech replies.

"In truth, yeah." Ace candidly responds. "He's done more work than all of us, he's the reason why we're all together. I mean, we're sitting around figuring out what to do whereas Rev's out there… doing. Plus, he's a kid, who knows how he'd respond when in danger."

"If he broke into the ultra-secure room at the university and survived your laser blast, I don't think there's anything that could stop him. He's too smart or fast to be stopped." Tech replies.

"I realise that, I just want to be sure." Ace replies. Lexi finishes getting changed, the clothes are slightly baggy, especially the waist of the pants as she leaves the cheerleading outfit on the ground in the bathroom. She heads back to the wardrobe to look for a belt. She senses the awkward silence as Tech and Ace stop talking as she enters the room, it makes her feel not only awkward, but awkward in the sense that she's never felt having this sort of fear of her; no one has ever feared for themselves when Lexi Bunny walks in the room.

"Is the silence because you're scared of me?" Lexi calmly asks as she ties a plain cloth belt around the pants to make them stop sliding down her waist.

"Kind of." Tech replies.

"Well, it hasn't happened again, so yeah, I'm not worried about me." Lexi replies, sitting down to the same table as Ace and Tech are.

"Ok, but we can't really do very much until Rev gets back." Ace explains.

"Hey, why don't you tell me how you know Ace?" Tech asks.

"It's nothing." Ace replies.

"Really?" Lexi replies in surprise. "He was this kid who'd stand up to all the teachers like he always had the right answer. I didn't actually see him do it because I was a few years below him."

Ace sinks a little into his seat; he doesn't like hearing anyone talk about this story.

"Anyway he got really popular and when he was in his final year, he got voted as school captain by basically everyone but the teachers didn't allow it because of his attitude or poor discipline or something else; the reason didn't matter, it's that it happened. This caused a huge revolt by everyone, including me; but nothing really changed. They brought in someone else, who was okay; but everyone wanted Ace. It is like they expected him to do the same things he's been doing, but he didn't do anything. I could tell that everyone was surprised, almost angry even, that he didn't do what they wanted him to do. So they lost interest in him and he faded into obscurity." Lexi explains to Tech. "Is that correct?"

"Pretty much." Ace says. "But do you know why I didn't try the same things? Standing up to teachers and challenging their authority? It's because it never worked, sure everyone got a kick out of it but it wasn't going to work. It would be like shooting a pea gun at a tank. Everyone hated me for it because they didn't see me doing anything they wanted me to do."

"I don't hate you." Lexi replies.

"You would be just a third grader."

"Does it matter?"

Ace gets stuck on the question; he tries to quickly think of something to say.

"You need to comb your hair." Ace replies, only aware he said that after he did, his inhibitions are lowering.

"My hair?" Lexi says, surprised at the sudden change of topic. Ace needs to go with the flow and act as if he meant to say that.

"Yeah, it would look better. It's a bit crumbled and messed up." Ace says, trying to contain himself.

"I guess you're right." Lexi self reflects, running her fingers thourgh her light blonde hair with her right hand. "I haven't paid much attention to it, you know, giant meteor; plus I'm not one of those girls who cares too much about her appearance, I don't spend all my money on make up or clothes."

"Then what do you spend it on?" Ace asks.

"Video games." She replies.

Tech has just sat in the background for the entire time, listening to this conversation in order to try and predict what people are saying so that he can figure out what type of person everyone is. It gives him something to do, because unless he is called upon, he's not going to wade into the conversation for the sake of doing so.

"Cool." Ace replies.

"It is." She replies.

"We haven't heard much from you Tech." Ace replies.

"Well…um." Tech stammers. "I don't know, I guess it's just me and my brain."

Tech chuckles at himself but inside he wants to get out of the room, to work on something instead of responding to trivial questions which he struggles to answer.

"I'm going to... do something." Tech says as he gets out of the chair. "Do you have a computer I can use?"

"Holographic system, over there." Ace points, showing him the approximate area the project will be shown; an open area in between the couch and the wall. Tech goes to get out of the social situation.

"Are you trying to find Rev?" Ace asks. Tech wasn't thinking specifically of that, he simply wanted to do something that wasn't listening to idle conversation.

"I guess." He replies as he bypasses the security on his computer without Ace realising.

"I'll go… comb my hair." Lexi says awkwardly as Ace becomes more interested in what Tech is doing. He brings up a live satellite feed before changing it to an infrared camera to make Rev's flames more visible. He begins by zooming out to cover most of the urbanised area before adjusting the display to make the hot spots stand out even more. If Rev were to show up, he'd see a streak of red on the map, but that doesn't eventuate. He swipes that map away to the side just in case something shows up.

"Okay, he's not flying." Tech says as Lexi comes back into the room looking much better than before.

"Wow, you look great." Ace replies.

"Thanks."

"I'll check his house."

"You know where he lives?" Ace asks.

"I can find out." Tech says.

It's an easy task. Tech makes it into the internal surveillance system of Revs parent's house, but he can't find any trace of Rev, even after a slight heart start when he saw his younger brother.

"I'm going to manually check places where he might have gone like stadiums, schools. It's going to take a while, so if that screen on the right starts flashing, that means he's on the move. In the mean time, I guess, keep doing whatever it is you're doing." Tech explains.

"You don't like talking much." Lexi says.

"I prefer the term socially challenged." Tech replies. "But, yes. I don't talk much unless it's useful information."

"You've been very useful so far Tech, we appreciate your work." Ace complements to Tech.

"Thanks."

"What should we do whilst Tech does his thing?" Lexi asks.

"I know what I should do." Ace says, pulling out his sword. "I need to try this out."

"Not in here." Lexi says but Ace grabs his jetpack and puts it around his back. He stands and looks towards the window.

"Stand back from the window." Ace warns before trying to unleash a burst of laser vision. It works in the way he intended it to. Cutting a hole in his window that's big enough for him to fit through.

"I'm going up to the top." Ace says.

"No! Wait, there's very little fuel left. It's too risky." Tech worries.

"Is there a parachute in these things?" Ace asks.

"Yes, It activates automatically in the event of an empty fuel tank." Tech recites.

"Great." Ace says, putting his sword firmly in his jacket pocket before taking one step through the opening in the window, standing halfway inside and outside. Holding the top of the window with his right hand, he moves the thrusters with his left hand before pushing himself away from the building. Lexi moves to the edge to see him rise up towards the sky before quickly moving away from the edge after realising how high she is up and how easily it is to fall.

"I hope he's got something to cover that up, otherwise it's going to get cold in here." Tech says to Lexi after she comes back from the opening. Meanwhile, Ace has no trouble going the extra 43 storeys to the very top; which is a place only frequented by technicians to fix the antennae or other building systems such as heating. He lands on top before walking forward to find a place that open enough for him to swing the sword fully. He takes it out before pressing the button to extend the blade. Slowly he moves it through the air to get a feel for it's characteristics at different angles and speeds. Once he's confident, he begins to swing the sword in various motions and in no precise order. It's more like exploring ways in which it can be used rather than strict practice of learned moves. After 10 minutes of swordplay with himself, he gets a phone call from Tech.

"I've found something, but not Rev." Tech explains. "Someone else has got powers, trouble is it's out of our range with the jetpacks and without Rev we can't reach him quickly."

"What sort of power?" Ace asks as he moves towards the edge of the building.

"I don't know, spinning at extreme velocity." Tech says.

"I'm coming down." Ace says. He readies himself to jetpack back down to his apartment, but instead realises that he could have just taken the elevator. The sign said that it was only unsafe to use it, not that it was broken down. He walks to the door to get inside, only to discover that it's locked from the inside. He thinks of what people in the movies would do; break down the door. He readies himself with a kick but the door remains solid and all he gets is a sore leg.

"Okay, plan B." Ace says after steadying himself. He fires his lasers at the door handle to pierce a hole through the lock. This works much more easily, he opens the door and walks inside to take the elevator from the 62nd floor to the 19th easily and silently via it's magnetic levitation. He enters through the front door to his apartment, a much more conventional entrance this time around.

"Any ideas on how we contact him?" Ace asks as they watch the screens that Tech has set up showing various angles of the stadium where a wrestler is destroying his competition by flinging them out of the arena. The inside of the arena seems to be untouched by the damage to the meteor as all of the patrons inside; they have all gone back to enjoying the fight after the brief flash of light.

"I think we have to wait until the fight is over, chances are no one realises what's actually happened; they think it's all part of the show." Tech explains. "In the meantime, you might want to fix that window you broke."

"First of all, it was a precision cut and second of all, we're probably going to have to find another place anyway. If that's five of us we're barely going to fit in here.

"That's still no reason to blast a hole in the window." Lexi replies.

"Let's not get too hung up on the little things." Ace replies, trying to defuse a conflict over something he perceives as insignificant. "Tech, maybe you can find a place we could go, somewhere that we could try out our powers."

"That's easy, we go underground, into the sewers." Tech replies. "We're in a place where could harm no one."

"Is there anywhere else that might not smell so bad?" Lexi asks.

"Unless we can refuel the jetpacks, no. It's walking distance for now." Tech replies.

"Okay, Lexi and I will go down below street level while you stay here and monitor the situation from up here." Ace says as he walks to the door to leave with Lexi catching up a few seconds later. Ace presses the button for the elevator. It opens right away as no one else has used it since he last used it. They both get inside and Ace presses the button to get to ground level. Ace secretly wants Lexi to say something, but he disguises his feelings well as they reach the ground floor.

"There's a sewer cap just outside." Ace says. He jogs ahead quickly to check if there's any traffic before running out onto the road to lift the sewer cap out of it's place. He strains to lift it out of the way, it takes most of his strength to move it just before Lexi arrives.

"I'll go first." Ace insists as he puts his legs onto the ladder to go down, he descends quickly and reaches the bottom where he waits for Lexi.

"Do you have the need to show off?" Lexi says as she reaches the ground.

"Was I? The line between showing off and being considerate is too small." Ace jokes, Lexi can see his point but it's not as funny as Ace thinks it is. It's not a funny laugh; it's more of a nervous laugh that expends some nervous energy. Ace looks both ways down the tunnel which looks a lot brighter for him than it does to Lexi thanks to his optical enhancements. He looks down one way and shoots his laser down it's length. It lights the tunnel up briefly like a long torchlight, showing the dark grey stone in a red-orange glow.

"Wait! Stop!" Lexi says. "I can hear something, other people are down here."

Ace turns to her and sees the pink rings floating up her ears.

"Super hearing." Ace states.

"They're running away, they think it's a gas line explosion." Lexi says, feeling sorry for them that they have unintentionally caused people to panic.

"Why would people be down here?" Ace asks. Lexi knows why.

"Giant meteor? Falling buildings? Mass confusion? Hiding from it all?" Lexi replies.

"Maybe we'll fire in the other direction." Ace says. Lexi listens out quickly just in case anyone is in that area. "I can't hear anyone around there, just water running."

Ace stops to see if he can hear the water running right next to him to compare his own hearing to hers, he can barely do so.

"Your hearing's really good, like 100 times better." Ace says.

"Not really because sound is measured on a logarithmic scale so 100 times better would be only be a 20 decibel difference. This is like, a billion times better."

Ace makes a big mental note to himself to show that Lexi is also smart, just like Rev and Tech, but maybe not as much in the computer and engineering departments. He hopes that he isn't surrounded by brainiacs otherwise he'll feel out of his depth on every conversation when the scientific jargon is thrown around.

"How about you try this time Lexi?" Ace asks. She hesitates, afraid to confront what she has. She takes a step away from Ace so she has some space of her own. Lexi takes a breath before doing the same action that Ace did by leaning his head forward and straining her eyes, but it triggers nothing. She tries again but to no avail.

"I'm not sure how it works, it happened suddenly." Lexi says, looking back to Ace.

"Do you remember exactly what you were doing when you did it?" Ace asks.

"Maybe I was like this." Lexi says, putting her hands out, pretending that she's protecting herself from falling debris. Nothing happens, whatever happened, it didn't come from her hands.

"Any ideas?" Lexi asks.

"I don't know, use your head." Ace replies.

"I'm trying but that's…"

"No, literally, use your head." Ace insists.

"Oh, okay." Lexi kindly replies after misunderstanding what Ace was saying. She focuses down the tunnel and suddenly a bright pink light charges up above her head, it grows bigger and bigger.

"Stop." Ace says, before the orb gets too big and stars to touch her ears. She stops doing so and it releases a beam of energy down the tunnel. She stops for a second to see what she has created. Lexi is lost for words, not because she is amazed but more in reverence of this power that has saved her life.

"That's amazing." Ace congratulates. Lexi nods back but she's still thinking it over. "Maybe you can control how long it charges for."

Lexi doesn't respond.

"You okay Lexi?" Ace asks, after a short pause, she replies back.

"I'm not sure what to make of it, the super hearing I can handle but this; this is more powerful than anything. I wonder if I'll be able to control it."

"It's not about if, but how." Ace explains. "These powers are gonna be with us forever, so we've got to learn how to use them."

"Or not use them." Lexi replies.

"What happens when the bad guys come? Super hearing's good for knowing where they are, but it's not much in a fight." Ace argues.

"Where are the bad guys?" Lexi asks. "Do you think it's going to turn out like a movie where there's always a bad guy to face the hero? You trust Zadavia too much, what if this is a plan made by the authorities just to make it easier to round us up before turning us into science experiments?"

"I know that the world is changing and strange things are happening, but what choice do we have? Zadavia can find us anywhere in the city, she's probably mega rich and powerful. I don't think she's going to betray us, but if it all comes to nothing, then at least we still have our powers." Ace defiantly says. Lexi pauses, looking down the tunnel again before deciding to try her energy beam again. She puts the tips of her fingers against the side of her forehead and it makes the beam charge up before she releases it down the tunnel, a smaller burst than before. She tries a quick burst immediately after that before feeling a little bit more confident with this power.

"It's working now." Lexi says.

"Great, maybe we should go back to Tech to see if anything's happened." Ace says.

"Thanks for your help." Lexi says.

"But I didn't do anything." Ace says.

"Exactly, You helped me figure it out on my own." Lexi says before giving a quick hug to Ace before latching onto the ladder to climb out of the sewer. Ace stands there for a second, trying to relish that brief emotional feeling before it subsides, which get him back on track with the task at hand. When the two of them arrive back in Ace's apartment, they discover 3 large vacuum sealed silver packets of a deep honey colour with a spout at the top corner. Tech is pouring the contents of one of these packets into the top of a jetpack.

"Guys, Zadavia sent over this fuel, enough to refuel our jetpacks." Tech says without losing sight of the careful job of pouring the fuel without spilling any of it.

"That's helpful." Ace says, with Lexi beginning to doubt her earlier comments over the trustworthiness of Zadavia.

"She also gave me this location where we should move to. It's the top floor in a office building for easy roof access. She said there will be lots of things waiting for us." Tech says. Ace thinks back to the conversation he had with her earlier, but in line with Lexi's concerns, he questions the veracity of this move.

"You're sure it's not a trap?" Ace asks.

"If it is, Lexi should be able to use her super hearing to find them before they see us. Plus, an ambush in such an easily escapable room would be difficult to execute. Even then, I don't think it's going to happen. I don't doubt what Zadavia's trying to do for us, I think she's trying to help us." Tech explains.

"Lexi's just a little but concerned." Ace explains.

"I see." Tech notes. "But I don't think we should be."

"You heard it from the smartest guy in the room." Ace says to Lexi.

"I trust what you say about her, but I'm not going to be blindly obedient." Lexi clarifies. "Don't say you didn't see it coming."

"I know." Ace says. "Tech, after you get the jetpacks filled up, how about we move out of here to this new place and see what waiting for us there?"

"Sounds like a plan."


	7. Jailbird

Chapter 7 – Jailbird

"Stupid prison." Duck says to himself inside his cell which is concrete on 5 sides and a clear plastic front which acts as a door. His casual beach attire has been swapped for a fluorescent orange one piece clothing to make prisoners easily findable. "I'm not meant to be confined in this tiny space next to murderers and thieves. I'm as hardworking as any other Acmetropolis citizen."

"Hey, Duck, shut up!" A thin tall man in his early 30's with short cropped dark red hair on top and shaved on the sides shouts across to his opposite cellmate.

"How does everyone in this city know my name?" Duck asks to himself, but it's overheard.

"I don't know, because you're a duck?" He replies condescendingly.

"That has nothing to… oh." Duck says., realising his point. "So, what are you in for? How can we escape this rotten place?"

"It's just a holding cell, it's only going to be a few hours so just shut up!" He shouts back, annoyed at his constant chatter.

"Seriously, what's the regime? How many guards are here and where are they stationed? Details, I need details." Duck asks, getting right on the nerve of the prisoner.

"It's just a holding cell, the court's upstairs, you sit trial, pay a fine or whatever, then leave. It's pointless to escape." He explains.

"A few hours too long." Duck replies back.

"Guards! Can you mute this guys cell?!" He shouts, hoping that someone will hear him. A few seconds later, all the noise from Duck's cell is cancelled out by white noise, meaning his shouting is reduced to a quiet whisper.

"You think you're funny?" Duck shouts, continuing on because he doesn't know that he can't be heard. "You're a piece of work, who would prefer staying inside these cells?"

The prisoner makes a taunting talking gesture with his hand before sticking his fingers in his ears to communicate that he can't be heard.

"Oh, you want to play a game of charades do you?" Duck angrily shouts. "How many words?"

The other prisoner stops paying attention to what Duck is doing and faces the opposite wall.

"Playing hard ball huh? Come on, give me clues." Duck says, but the other prisoner does not move, facing the opposite wall. "You're despicable, I'm going to come over to your cell and…"

He would have completed his sentence had he not begun to teleport to the place he wanted to. He lands right inside the opposite cell, standing right behind him. Duck taps him on the shoulder from behind.

"Ahem." Duck says. "How many words?"

"What?" The prisoner asks in fear, moving himself away from Duck and into a corner in response to the unusual occurrence. "How did you get in here?"

"I don't know, don't care, now how many words?" Duck asks.

"What? I don't know." He says in fear, like he's being tortured under interrogation.

"Really? You have the audacity to make all of these visual cues and give me no clues." Duck tirades.

"No, I just wanted you to be quiet, please, get away from me." He explains, making Duck a little bit more uncomfortable about his misinterpretation.

"Okay, you could have just told me." Duck says before teleporting out of this cell into his own cell where he still can't be heard by anyone on the outside. "But you could try something else, your clues are a bit off."

Duck sees the man says something before standing down to look across the to the cell of a Duck who can freely teleport and yet can't or won't use it to escape. He doesn't look like the type of person who seems to be driven by strong moral principles.

"Now, if I can get in there then maybe I can get out of this cell and get out of this prison. Let's see, which direction is out?" He asks himself, so teleports out of his cell and into the corridor as a starting point. Other prisoners begin to take notice and come close to their cell fronts to take a look. Duck walks along the corridor to what he thinks is the exit. He reaches the end of the corridor without any suspicion or indication that the police have caught him. Once he gets to the intersection, he looks for any guards that might be around but can't see or hear any coming this way. Slowly he wanders the hallways being the bane of every prisoner still behind the walls as he roams freely whilst the rest are trapped. After two minutes of wandering the basement holding cells of the courthouse, he finds what he believes to be an exit; a concrete staircase leading upwards to what he thinks is ground level. He climbs the stairs to the top and sees that it leads to another holding cell behind a clear plastic enclosure where people are tried from the courthouse. However, the bench seating, the judges stand and everywhere else inside this room is empty.

"A little strange." Duck comments to himself. "Wait, I need to get changed out of this prison outfit otherwise people will find me."

He teleports back underground in order to look for his clothing. He wanders around the LED lit concrete passageways, looking for a storage room. On the way, he passes another row of prisoners in their holding cells; not caring one bit to even think of letting them out as well. He finds a locked door which is of interest to him, even though there is no label or placard on the door which clearly shows that this is the place where his clothing is kept; it seems like the place where they'd keep it. He walks up to the door and tries to open it normally but finds it to be locked.

"Oh yeah, locked doors can't hold me." Duck taunts towards the inanimate door before trying to teleport into the room. He enters into the pitch black room with no indication of where the lights are.

"Great, now I can't see." He comments out loud, quickly the motion sensors detect his movement and turn the lights on. Duck becomes suspicious that someone must be watching him. "Who did that?"

He looks around the small room with a small full of small lockers about 40cm high and wide with hard steel doors each with a 6 digit number engraved on the front. The numbers look somewhat familiar, they represent the prisoner's numbers. Duck stretches his uniform so he can see what his own number is, he has to turn his head awkwardly to the side so he can see around his beak.

"Okay, 3…26…43…7." Duck quickly sees that the lockers are in numerical order, with lower numbers closer to the door and higher ones are further away. A few seconds later, he finds his locker, only to find that it's at the very top in a place that he can't reach.

"Great." He says exasperatingly. "Way to think of the vertically challenged."

He tries to jump for it but can't reach the button that releases the magnetic lock to the door.

"I need plan B." However, that would involve getting someone taller to help him reach, which he doesn't like the sound of, but he can't think of another option. He teleports back over to the cell opposite his with the man inside very surprised to see him.

"I need your help." Duck says, not sounding desperate but more out of necessity. He takes the man with him as he teleports out of the cell and back into the locker room. "Now, can you open that locker up top with his number on it?" Duck says, point to the number on his uniform.

"How? What? It's not possible?"

"Of course it is, you're tall enough." Duck replies. "Now, get it out for me otherwise I'll put you back in your cell."

"Wha, okay. Hold on." he says, dismayed at his current situation. He reads the number on Ducks uniform and finds the locker, opens it and passes down the plastic sealed tub containing Duck's personal belongings onto the floor.

"Good." Duck says as the man doesn't know what to do next, he doesn't know of the lax security in this prison.

"Can you put me back in my cell?" He asks.

"I don't know why you'd want to do that, there're no guards around but, hey, it's your choice." Duck says, grabbing the wrist of the man so he can take him back into his cell. They both arrive back in the cell where Duck lets go of him before teleporting away without hearing the retaliation of what the man had to say next.

"Idiot." Duck says as he gets his prison uniform off in the privacy of this room and puts his clothes back on. Once done, he teleports out of the locked locker room and back at the base of the stairs where he found the exit before. He climbs the stairs and goes back into the clear booth inside the empty courtroom to take a second look around before teleporting out of the room and into the corridor in between the bench seating inside the courtroom. From there, he has a door to his left and right but he sees the large double doors directly in front of him calling for him to move through towards freedom. He walks through the door like he owns the place, pushing the doors open simultaneously with his hands, expecting a similar pattern as before with no one in the adjacent room. However, he doesn't have the chance to move or react to the waiting room packed with police officers and prison guards. Duck is tranquilised with 3 darts in the posterior, falling to the floor like the levels of smugness and invincibility did for the brief second he was conscious of his walk to capture.

"He's got 30 minutes, let's get him moving."

Two heavily armed officers scoop Duck up off the floor quickly whilst another 6 follow behind. 30 seconds later, the courtroom resumes as if there was no interruption and the holding cells are tended to.


	8. Moving In

**Chapter 8 – Moving in**

Ace and Lexi spot the roof of the building that Tech showed them in the pictures. A 200 metre tall building with matte, unreflecting silver panels up the three curved pillars that meet at the top to make a shape that's similar to a claw. Two of the pillars start straight and bend towards the straight third pillar. At the top is a spire holding communications equipment such as satellites dishes and antennae. Just below where the three pillars meet, the space under there is empty as there is hardly enough room for any useful office floors or housing so it has been built as a viewing platform, even though it doesn't provide a great view of the city, the sky can be seen from underneath the spire. The three in jetpacks have to manoeuvre carefully in between the pillars in order to land on the top safely. Once they get on the ground, they see that there are several large cables are running from the stairs stairway to the top floor up to the spire itself.

"Hopefully this place is better than my apartment." Ace says as they retract the wings in the jetpacks and walk towards the open door and into the building itself. The room below is an expansive polished concrete room with a black in the centre containing the lifts, stairs, utilities and toilets. Dark tinted glass are everywhere in the exterior of the triangular shaped floor. Already, lots of equipment has already been set up. White plastic fold out tables with black metal legs have been set up around the room in rows with masses of cables flowing down them like a stationary waterfall leading to computers and other machinery. In one of the triangles acute corners are boxes piled high up to the roof all with handwritten scribbles about what they contain on the sides. In another area of this open plan area is a set of two couches set perpendicular to each other with small projectors mounted on the roof to create the holographic picture in the area in front of both couches.

"She's really outdone herself." Tech says, looking at all of the computer and machinery he can use to build and program with as well as all of the raw materials at his disposal.

"Maybe she's here." Ace replies.

"It's not a her." Lexi says, igniting her super hearing. "It's Rev, he's in the bathroom in the centre."

"Rev?" Ace asks. "Is this where he's been the entire time?"

"He seems overworked." Lexi says, listening to the ranting he is doing to himself.

"Rev built all of this?" Tech asks, the kid has some real skill and ability at putting things together. "He's ruined all the fun I could have done building this."

"You would have taken hours, maybe days to do this, but Rev did it in under an hour so we've gotta…" Ace explains.

"Wait, he's coming out." Lexi says. Everyone quietens down.

"…software up and running but no matter what I do I can't speed up the installing process that's what I can't do faster even though I am faster than before. I talk faster, move faster, think faster though not necessarily any better but maybe if I can get the…" Rev says to himself before realising that Ace, Lexi and Tech are in the room as well. A deep feeling of embarrassment goes through him as he realises that he forgot about them.

"Guys, I'm so, so, so, so, so sorry I forgot about you guys. I got this message from Zadavia telling me to come over here and help build all of these sweet sweet sweet looking computer and machines which Tech you could probably use better than I can but really I'm sorry about forgetting you all I was to caught up in the process of building and putting together all this equipment that was here and I got a little sidetracked." Rev explains.

"It's okay Rev, next time just let us know first, okay?" Ace says. Rev nods his head quickly in reply with a sorry look on his face that's eager to not displease again.

"Is everything finished?" Lexi asks. "You should take a break."

"Thanks but I don't really need a break, I don't feel tired. Plus there's still more work that needs to be done once the software has finished installing, which really should be done soon." Rev explains hurriedly.

"How about you show us around, show us what you have done." Tech asks.

"Okay over there are some computers and over there are various machines and tool which you can use to build things and in those boxes are a materials which you can build them with and there is a holographic projection system." Rev explains quickly.

"Rev, we love your work, but you don't need to try and do everything yourself. Is there anything else you need us to do?" Ace asks calmly.

"Well, that's all the stuff that was here." Rev says.

"This place is too… serious." Lexi comments, thinking about certain alternations and additions she would make. "We need to make this place more appealing."

"That would be great if we had some money, we're not exactly rich." Ace replies. However, as Tech is moving the boxes around to see exactly what materials are available, he finds something else hidden deep inside the stack of boxes. A locked briefcase which he opens using his magnetic powers to reveal a very overwhelming surprise.

"Oh…my." Tech stammers as he stares at the lustre of the 3 quasarlinium bars before lifting the briefcase itself with his powers instead of his muscles because he could not carry the weight of it by himself. He floats the briefcase and puts it opened on the table.

"Are those… real quasarlinium bars?" Ace asks as surprised as everyone.

"It definitely looks like it. That's got to be worth about… 1 million."

"1 million quasarlinia?" Lexi says back to herself to make sure this isn't a dream and to confirm the sight to herself. "We could really do a lot with that."

"But how could we actually spend this? Don't you think the bank would suspect something if we just walked in there with these bars?" Ace asks.

"I don't think that would be a problem because they'd more likely be happy to have to take the bars into something else to make even more money or they could use it as security on their loans to something like that." Rev explains, the same question in different forms runs through everyone else's head, but Ace is the first to ask it directly.

"Do you remember everything?" Ace says.

"No, that's impossible because everything is way too much…" Rev begins to explain.

"No, I mean like a photographic memory." Ace says.

"I don't think so because an eidetic memory is virtually non existent in adults and even if my memory is good it's definitely not perfect I forget stuff all the time like when I forgot about you earlier, which again, I am really sorry for." Rev explains.

"It's okay." Ace repeats as he gets an idea. "How about we bring our stuff here, grab what we can bring over in the jetpacks. It'll make the place a bit more…personal."

"And comfortable." Lexi adds. "Is there even a bed in this place?"

"Don't think so, why? Are you thinking of staying here?" Tech asks.

"Yeah, it's bigger than what I live in and besides…" Lexi says before a change of tone that descends sharply from her lively personality to self-pitying. "…I don't want to have to go back."

"But none of us have had powers for more than a couple of hours." Tech adds.

"And I feel like a new person. I've felt better over this past hour than I have in months and I kinda like feeling good." Lexi explains. "Surely at least one of you knows what I'm talking about."

"We all like to feel good." Ace replies.

"I mean, this is like a new lease on life for me." Lexi explains. "A chance to be somebody instead of nobody. If this person wants us to be like this super, hero, crime fighting team, then count me in."

Everyone takes this message on board, unable to come up with a suitable reply that matches the emotions being displayed.

"So, how about we meet back here in an hour once we've grabbed our stuff?" Ace says.

"I'll stay here and keep an eye on the place, as well as testing out some of this equipment." Tech explains. "You'll have to refill the fuel tanks on the jetpacks."

"Is there any fuel in here?" Lexi asks.

"In here. Enough for many refills." Tech says, showing them the box where it is kept.

"Alright Tech." Ace says. "How about you surprise us when we get back? Show us what you can do."

"Um… okay." Tech nervously replies. "I'll see what I can do."

An hour of alone time to build whatever he wants, a freedom that Tech has rarely been allowed to have. At first he is unsure of what to build, it is the downside of such freedoms when there are no pressing needs. So he first decides to work on improving the jetpacks to extend the range and at the same time, works on improving his skills with the magnetic levitation, trying to make precise movements to improve his ability with the power. He finds that using the power is not the most efficient way for building equipment, he is more used to his hands and physically touching the objects gives the familiar sensation of how each of the materials feels; like the coldness of steel, the intricate patterns of carbon fibre and subtle shift in balance of a jar of liquid as it's being moved around. Once he's satisfied with that small project, he wonders what else is there to do. He can't think of an answer, he has all the materials and equipment he needs to build nearly everything but lacks the need to build something; the raw materials are more useful to him later in the longer term. So Tech moves slowly away from the workstation with his head tilted slightly towards the ground, looking at his own feet, before slumping down on the pale green couch.

"What…a…day." Tech declares in the otherwise silent room, not in satisfaction but in reverence to what has happened in such a short space of time. "You've got powers, this magnetic levitation power and this self healing power, what do I do with them? It's a bit to get used to, no… it's a paradigm shift in DNA remodelling. With that many DNA alterations, it's a miracle we're alive. How many other could be out there, hundreds maybe, even thousands given the probability distribution across the city. Wait, that's it!"

Tech jumps back off the couch to work on his new brilliant idea. He jogs back across to the workstation and gets all the materials he needs in a flash thanks to the magnetic levitation. He works like a coyote possessed, moving parts into position and fixing them together until the parts becomes something that looks like what he had envisioned in his head. A disk shaped the diametre of a car tyre drone with four rotors inside the body fitted on gyroscopic mounts to allow for a complete range of movement. Because of this, the drone needs no fins or stabilisers and can be shaped like a flat disk. In the centre of the body is a small dish that extends out from the bottom to send out a tracking beam to scan for anyone on the ground that may have a similar DNA mutation to either of them. All he needs now is for everyone to return and offer up their DNA to be scanned, copied and uploaded onto the drone. He performs a quick flight test around the room, controlling it manually from an interface on the computer. It performs several laps around the central column before returning to Tech; who feels satisfied with its flight characteristics.

After finishing this project, he is not feeling empty. He has all sorts of ideas he could implement, and not quite enough time; the perfect motivation to keep on building. He sees that Rev is the first to arrive back after only 25 minutes without the helmet he was wearing, consequently, he's quickly brushing though the feather on his head to make them stand up straight again.

"Hi Tech." Rev says quickly before he moves the two flexible bags that are over his shoulders into a space corner.

"Yes these gadgets are…" Tech replies but rev is like a kid in a gadget shop, something he's experienced a lot of times but still has the same wonder whenever there's something neat and new.

"I can't wait to see what they do." He replies. "If only I had the mechanical genius of you so I could finish this project I'm working on myself it's kind of a personal thing but I do want to see what these things do."

"If you've got something you're working on, I'd be happy to take a look." Tech offers, but Rev is hesitant to anyone else working on this project, and in any case, he might not need to finish it.

"It's something I want to work on by myself if that's alright." Rev replies.

"Sure, but if you need any help…"

"It's fine, I can do it my myself."

Tech takes him through the devices he's made; the drone, the jetpack, a couple of communication devices, some roughly cut Kevlar and graphene body armour and the in progress work of metal and electronic parts that is meant to be a second drone to speed up the process of scanning the city.

"I need some of your DNA." Tech says. Rev does the same thing as Ace did at the start, trying to pick off a feather which he presents to Tech. "I need some blood."

"Why not saliva it's safer and less time consuming, do you have a plastic cup or something I can spit into otherwise I'll just use my hand." Rev says before gathering saliva in his mouth.

"Here." Tech says, wondering secretly why he didn't use saliva instead of blood before. Rev takes the small plastic container that's like a short test tube and spits into it before handing it back to Tech who puts it into a DNA sequencer hooked up to a computer which is then connected to the drone itself. "Hopefully it'll scan through the city in a few days. There will probably be too many to count when it's done, enjoy the space while it lasts."

"Yeah, well, thanks for showing me your stuff, you can come any look at my things but they're really not as interesting or as cool as what you've done." Rev replies before zipping away to his stuff which he begins to unpack and finishes almost as soon as he begun, returning back to Tech to look at his more interesting stuff.

"Hey Rev, I found someone else who has powers. But he's far away from here, so you're the only one who can get there." Tech says.

"Okay, where and who is he?" Rev asks. Tech walks across to a computer and shows him to rev.

"Slam Tasmanian, Profess…" Tech begins to explain, but Rev cuts him off.

"Professional wrestler, 110 kilograms, he looks like some sort of hot shot even though he hasn't really broken into the big time or come close to getting into the main championship but on the other hand he'd really add to our group because none of us are really strong maybe Ace is the strongest but none of us have as much inertia has he does." Rev explains.

"Yeah, took the words right out of my mouth." Tech says. even though he he's been subjected to several bursts of analysis and knowledge from Rev, he's still not yet comfortable with how intelligent he is.

"So do you want me to go there right now or wait until Ace gets back?" Rev asks.

"If you want, you don't have to ask me for permission." Tech advises, being uncomfortable assuming the formal role of a leader, that's not to say he doesn't care for the safety about the youngest person in the room even though he said he would be impossible to stop.

"I don't know how this is all going to work out you know because we don't really know each other or have a formal arrangement or hierarchy in which we have a chain of command but it doesn't matter because I know I'm going to be at the bottom." Rev explains.

"Um, I…" Tech fumbles at an answer to this question. "What do I answer to that?"

"Listen, I've had a pretty crumby existence up until now being under people's thumbs and now's my chance to be more than nothing so at least since everyone respects you because of your intelligence can you at least make sure that I'm not at the bottom of the pecking order excuse the pun." Rev asks.

"I appreciate the trust you show in me, but… this isn't an, organisation or something like that." Tech replies, unable to think far enough ahead to figure out what Rev is thinking about.

"If all of this fails for some reason or we turn on each other I need to know I at least have your support if anyone else comes here and you're willing to back me up and I'll do the same for you, what do you say?" Rev asks.

"You want to make an alliance with me?" Tech asks for confirmation. "I wouldn't be so cynical to suggest that we're going to break up after only being together for a few hours."

"Yeah but you know, super powers and possibly super egos mixed together are not the best combination to have around which is why we should have a fall back plan just in case it happens because even though the chances are almost zero the consequences would be deadly." Rev explains. Tech just wants Rev to stop getting him to think way to far ahead than he wants to, where the permutations become exponentially greater when Rev is only focusing on one of those possibilities.

"Okay, sure, you have my support." Tech says.

"Great! That's sweet!" Rev exclaims. "I'm going to go to the stadium."

"Hold on a sec." Tech says, picking up one of the communicators. "Take one of these, the communication is quantum secure, so it can't be intercepted and decrypted."

"Cool, see you later." Rev says before dashing out of the room and out into the sky. Tech runs across to the stairs leading to the roof to see the fire trail that Rev produces as he flies away. Tech wonders how afraid of all of this Rev is that he feels compelled to start to get people on his side. It's either that he doesn't trust the others which seems highly unlike what he's shown today or that he is worried about what may happen next. This opens a can of worms in Tech's mind as he walks back to his workstation, all thoughts of how they could be targeted and wiped out by who knows; government, military, police, angry mobs, aftershocks, another meteor, others with powers. Now he wishes he didn't try to estimate the amount of people with powers in the thousands, now he says what's driving Rev to come to these conclusions; it makes him afraid as well. He has, on the plastic table, a device to find such people who could possibly destroy him and the three others with undeveloped and who are unskilled at using their powers. Immediately, he decides to remove the DNA scanner from the drone and move onto a militaristic scientific development program for the next thirty minutes until Ace arrives back with his stuff in a backpack he's had to face forwards so that he could have the jetpack at the same time.

"Hey Tech." Ace greets before seeing the weapons leaning up against the table where Tech, wearing a welding mask, makes more. "Was there a declaration of war I missed?"

"Self defence." Tech replies as he continues to working on arming the group.

"This looks a bit more than self defence." Ace says, looking at the assault blasters.

"Can't ever be too safe." Tech says as he stops welding to address Ace more directly.

"I'm a bit, uh, overwhelmed. This is the real deal, not like the fake ones in the movies." Ace says, not wanting to pick up a weapon that can actually do significant damage from range even though he can do that without needing a blaster. "What's with all the weapons anyway? This seems so sudden and unexpected."

"Self defence." Tech replies, Ace picks up on the underlying reasons faster than Tech could on Rev. "Okay, I see where this is going. You think we're going to be attacked?"

"Yes, exactly, we're going to be attacked by someone who thinks that people with powers are a threat, and that thought would cross the mind of anyone that knows about what is happening." Tech says. Ace pauses to deliver what he thinks is a killer punch to Tech's argument.

"You know what Rev did before he saw me?" Ace says. "He saved nearly 300 people from drowning. Are we really such a threat?"

Ace walks away to put his stuff away properly. Ace is expecting Tech to agree to his point sometime before he puts his stuff down. In the same open area against the wall as Rev put his stuff. When Ace turns around he sees Tech slumped over the table and on his knees with his arms spread out and his head tilted sideways.

"You okay Tech?" Ace Asks as he jogs across the room to help him. He makes it across to the coyote but sees that he is having some trouble coming to terms with his actions.

"This is why I work at a university and not as some whack job inventor. I can't decide what to build for myself!"

"Well, you decided to build these weapons and those disk things and those others things on the table." Ace says.

"No, not that! Tech says, getting up from the table to stand up on his feet. "I can build anything I can put my mind to given the time and resources, but can't decide what to build. I make a lot of wrong choices and I need someone to tell me what to do because… well, it's easier. I don't have to worry about doing that."

"None of us are as smart as you." Ace says. "And, so what if you made a few weapons? Let's just put them away and hope we never have to use them. Besides, what's actually wrong with that?"

"You know… I'm not sure myself." Tech says as another wave of guilt crawls over him, not knowing what is wrong, is wrong, right?

"You're trying too hard at proving that you're smart, everyone knows you're the smartest out of all of us. I imagine that you probably make just as many mistakes as the rest of us, but they are only mistakes if you don't see them as opportunities." Ace replies.

"You seem to be the more intelligent one, you have the right words at the right time." Tech complains in hopelessness that his tongue will never be so smooth as the rabbit's.

"Nah, that one came from a TV show I did, somehow that line must have stuck with me." Ace replies. "I probably have a whole collection of lines like that somewhere in my head."

"You've got to show us what you've been in." Tech says, feeling a little bit better now that Ace's infectious optimism has plagued him.

"If you want, it's nothing spectacular, you're the one who said my acting was average." Ace replies.

"I did say that." Tech says, regretting that as well.

"Eh, don't shoot yourself over it." Ace jokes before looking down at the weapons. "Are these loaded?"

"No." Tech replies. Ace bends down and picks up one, imagining himself picking off bad guys as he looks down the sight before putting it down when he comes back to reality.

"Hey, can you build something that will help me use this sword better?" Ace asks.

"Like a simulator?" Tech asks for clarification.

"I was thinking more like something that told me how to use it, like showing me some techniques or something." Ace replies.

"Yeah, I can do that." Tech says, instantly getting to work on Ace's proposition in order to get past the failures of earlier. Meanwhile, Ace goes across the room to the window to look out at the view, wondering what may possibly be in store for them next. It's more of this silent pondering and watching both out the windows and towards Tech working away on the bench that passes the time until Lexi arrives back; having changed her clothes out of the one's that Ace gave her and into a black jacket and similar black pants to what Ace let her use except skinnier and better fitting, not going all the way over her ankles so that they can see the black, flat soled shoes with a white rim around the side of the sole. As she comes inside, she takes off the jetpack and her jacket to reveal a light pink shirt, though there is one peculiar addition to her person that Ace takes notice of.

"Why are your ears tied together?" Ace asks.

"Oh, it's something I wear whenever I need to be focused." Lexi replies, reaching behind her back to show Ace the two flowing strands of green before letting gravity take care of them as she lets go.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Ace asks. "It looks unnatural."

"No, I don't feel it that much. I can see why you wouldn't have one, your ears add a lot to your height." Lexi replies.

"What do you want me to say to that?" Asks Ace.

"Nothing, I was just, pointing out why it may be different for you if you wore a ribbon like this, not that I want you to…and probably you don't want to wear one anyway because this is something kinda personal to me but helps me out when I need it; like dealing with this whole thing of weird powers with glowing rings coming up from my ears and being able to hear things from ages away and…"Lexi says with her speech escalating in speed and anxiety.

"Calm down Lexi. Focus." Ace says, sensing that she needs to be calmed down. Tech stays in the background, downloading the biomechanics of swordplay and uploading them into a workable holographic program whilst listening in and trying to be as quiet and unobtrusive as possible. Lexi takes a couple of deep breaths to calm down as she realises the irony of what she has done.

"Okay." Lexi exclaims, making a motion with her hands that's akin to subtly pushing something in front of her a few centimetres downward.

"Focus."

Ace spots the pink glow in her eyes, it's the cue he needs in order to get out of the way and fast. He dives to his left, waiting for the explosion to rip behind him. Lexi becomes confused at Ace's flurry across the floor, she turns around, expecting someone to be behind her. However, Tech didn't move an inch from his spot, either because he knew he was safe or because he was frozen in fear.

"Huh." Lexi says, confused about what's happening. She turns on her super hearing to check to see if anyone else is in the room, which there isn't.

"That was close." Ace mutters underneath his breath, but Lexi hears it as if he was standing right next to her.

"What was close?" Lexi asks. It takes a second before Ace realises that she could hear what he said.

"Your eyes, they went pink so I dived out of the way." Ace explains, getting to his feet. "I thought you were going to trigger that beam."

Lexi checks herself from a few seconds earlier, she didn't feel as if that power was being triggered. It feels like the force that repels a magnet of the same pole as it gets closer, a kickback but a smooth kickback; not like the sudden, jarring recoil of a gun.

"Was I?" She asks but Lexi already feels powerless over this one aspect which makes her feel powerless over the whole because this one addition is more powerful than the others. She would like to crawl into a shell and hide in a place where she could do no damage to anyone, however Lexi doesn't want to go back to being who she was, to do that she has to become braver; whatever that means. So, instead of running away and letting the power control her, she goes to Tech in the hope that she can get control of the power.

"Tech, you need to figure out how my power works before I kill someone." Lexi says desperately.

"I'd have to set up a heavily reinforced blast proof area inside the building and that will take a while." Tech explains.

"Or find somewhere isolated and empty where I can't hit anything or anyone." Lexi says.

"The Acmetropolis desert would be the best bet on that part, and it will be in range once I upgrade your jetpacks." Tech explains.

"I might head on out as well." Ace replies. "I need to get use to this laser vision also."

"Okay, just give me 20 minutes with your jetpacks so they'll be ready for you to fly out to the desert." Tech says. "I'll work on setting up a blast chamber and some test equipment to see exactly what is being fired so I can find a way to defend against it and make the room safe enough to fire inside here."

"Sounds like a plan."


	9. Wrestling with Yourself

**Chapter 9 – Wrestling with Yourself**

**The Acmedome, Acmetropolis City. **

By this time, the sun is barely visible over Acmetropolis, the brightest lights are coming from below instead of above. As Rev flies across the city, he tries to be as discrete as possible, he doesn't want to have the attention on him even if he can fly like no one else can. He stays low across the city, more importantly below the level of the dome itself so that no one can see him coming towards him as they watch the final stages of the wrestling tournament. He stops and lands on an adjacent building to figure out how to enter this building without being seen. There are security guards outside the doors leading to the 3 landing pads on the outside of the building, impossible to get past anyway even if he was flying through them at high speed; a messy impact with a wall 5 metres inside would be what he would be confronted with. So, using his internal GPS, he locates a different way inside.

"Through there, in, down, in, out, outside and in again; too easy!" Rev says before running inside the itself building down to the top floor before running into the staircase to descend down it at high speed, running diagonally down with the wall until he stops when he gets to the ground floor where he pauses.

"Normal speed, normal speed." Rev reminds himself as he walks through the door and sees the stone floored lobby around him with the doors 30 metres away. He would prefer a lot more to simply breeze out of here as fast as possible, but where people can see him it is more important to act normal. It takes a long and painfully conscious effort to slow down, each step feels like an eternity compared to the speed he could do this at. Rev makes it out onto the street where the streets are clogged due to traffic disruptions caused by the impact of the meteor and subsequent tsunami.

"No need for speed, normal speed." Rev reminds himself again as he moves into the street, weaving past the stationary vehicles to the other side of the street to the entrance to the Acmedome. Unsurprisingly, this late into the fight, no one is lining up to enter and no one is wanting to leave, however the security measures are such that he can't get inside without a ticket; without money, that is impossible. The turnstiles are covered from the roof to the floor by tall thin glass doors, meaning there is no gap for him to take advantage of to sneak inside. He then walks slowly to the carpark entrance, which takes up the first 15 floors of the building and is guarded by only a boom gate; a much simpler option to get past. No cars are going to the entrance, so he looks up to the concrete ramp and guns it. Running as fast as possible up the ramp to climb up the spiralled route that goes around the perimeter of the building. Once again, it is easier for him to run along the vertical wall instead of on the ground because of the lack of traction. He slows down once he reaches the top floor and simply jogs over to the elevator in order to get higher up the building. He presses the button for the bottom level of the stadium and waits for the ride to be completed.

He knows exactly where to go to find Slam, in the changing rooms where all of the wrestlers are waiting, resting and training as the tournament progresses. However, now, that room is filled with 14 out of 16 competitors; Slam being one of them. The elevator doors open to a quiet corridor save for the robotic vacuum cleaners whizzing around the floor to clean up the mess from the final break before the final. Knowing that he could be spotted, he walks around the circular corridor, passing all of the food and drink stalls before coming up to a heavily secure door with a security guard standing just to the side. Rev already has a plan as to how to get inside.

"Excuse me."

"All access pass?" The guard asks, being the only legitimate way to get inside.

"No, I just want to know where the bathroom is." Rev asks, trying to say it as slowly as a normal person would, but it comes out still too fast which the guard interprets as nervousness and implies that he thinks the roadrunner is trying to get inside.

"No all Access pass, no entry, now move along, you're missing the fight." He explains.

"Sorry to disturb you, but I think that person over there needs your help." Rev says.

The guard only briefly looks to his left, where the bird was pointing, turning back forward without moving an inch; he thinks that he's not gullible enough to fall for that trick. He would be right if confronted with anyone else, no one could get inside that door with the fraction of a second opportunity that Rev had. He stops at the top of the stairs, recovering from the risky opportunistic moment. He picks himself up from the side of the wall and begins to descend the stairs down into the restricted area. As he enters the rooms, he sees that everyone is glued to a TV screen on the other side of the room, watching that fight that they wanted to be in. Rev slowly walks forward to the back of the seated group of wrestlers. Rev hesitates at the sight of all of these much stronger men and the imposing figures they all are.

"Um, excuse me. Can I speak to Slam for a minute?" Rev asks to the entire group whilst looking at Slam sitting in the middle of the group. Some of them turn around whereas most keep on watching the TV.

"Hey, are you here to take the order for the buffet?" The closest one to him asks.

"No, I need to talk to Slam in private for a minute."

"He's got no pass." Another one points out. "It's another fan."

"No but I…" Rev pleads. Slam tries to stand up and talk to Rev but another sits him down.

"When fans disturb your personal space, you have to give them the opportunity to leave before going after them." He whispers.

"Bird, we ask you one time to leave. Otherwise, we bring the ring in here." He warns. A sudden wave of confidence comes over Rev, he feels that he can actually beat 13 wrestlers in a fight.

"No, I'm not leaving until I talk to Slam! So if you have to throw me out then so be it because that's not going to happen!" Rev counters. All the wrestlers except for Slam get out of their chairs and move them to the side.

"I give it 5 seconds." One wrestler guesses as they stand up.

"How about this?" Rev offers. "If you can't pin me down in one minute then I get to talk to Slam in private."

"Deal." One agrees, echoing the sentiment of the others. Slowly they walk beside each other to corner the roadrunner on the other side of the room.

"Listen, I might not be the strongest or the most cunning or even that good in a fight. In fact I don't instigate fights I'm on the other side of them; but I'll tell you this. I can run away fast, so fast you won't be able to see me or even touch me because you can't corner me because I'll simply get out, bye." Rev half taunts half explains as he backs himself into a corner of the room. All the while, he looks for a way out of this. He sees the gap above them and bolts for it when he has the chance going straight over them, before they have a chance to react, and across to the other side of the room.

"Come on, you're faster than that!" Rev taunts whilst running on the spot near to where Slam is sitting. Some wrestlers become more aggressive, wanting to end this as quickly as possible. Their heads turn periodically back to the TV screen to check on the progress of the fight upstairs before returning to the one happening right in front of them. A wrestler leaps forward to catch the bird but Rev moves across two steps to dodge it. They all work as a team to try and corner whilst leaving no gaps, but it is of no use. Rev gets out just as easily as before.

"No more cornering, spread out, he doesn't have the space to run around." One instructs to the others. They all spread out to cover more space but still try and squeeze him out. Rev looks at how they are fanning out and plots out a path in between the wrestlers. Without warning, the lights go out, the only visible light in the room are the slightly pale glowing eyes of Rev, who is using his GPS system to find his way around the room without needing light.

"Hey." Rev says from right behind another wrestler whilst tapping him on the shoulder. It draws the response he wants, he swings his clenched fist around to where he felt the touch on his back and unintentionally connects with the jaw of whoever was behind him. In a flash, Rev does this to nearly everyone in the room before returning to the light switch to allow everyone else to inspect the damage. 5 of the wrestlers are getting to their feet after being hit; not enough for Rev's liking. So he begins round two, distracting and irritating the wrestlers but prodding and taunting his way around the room whilst listening out for the unintentional hits he is causing. He uses the rest of the minute to do this before allowing everyone else to see what he has done. Nearly everyone is one the ground and a few are getting to their feet. Slam still sits patiently in the corner, confused at what has happened to all his fellow wrestlers.

"That's it, one minute's up you all need to leave the room if you can." Rev announces, but most are incapable of doing so and Rev knows it. So he talks to Slam in the room amongst the quiet moaning.

"You're Slam right? Listen, this is all going to sound a bit crazy but you have to come with me because something's happened and you're not going to believe it at first so I really think it's best if I tell you once you've arrived." Rev explains

Slam replies back to inform Rev of one obstacle he has to overcome.

"Your manager? Um, we won't need to worry about him, or her, or it. Let's just leave now." Rev insists.

Slam then tells him of something else.

"You're worried of the penalties on your contract? I don't think…" Rev begins to explain. For the last few minutes, nothing has gotten in his way that he hasn't found a way past. Rev, for a few minutes, was the opposite of his usual self. He was confident in a way that showed he was on top rather than the other way around, trying to appease others or himself. Now, in a second, that's gone and he has to work around the problem that is set before him.

"Okay, you need to call your manager and... and tell him to come down here right now." Rev insists. Slam digs into his locker to find a mobile phone which he uses to contact his manager.

"Kid, you won't be able to afford his release clause." A wrestler advises him.

"We'll see." He replies. At this stage, all of the wrestlers are standing or at least leaning against the walls with eyes on the TV to see what is happening in the match. Rev takes a look simply because everyone else is doing so, he figures that it must be an interesting one. After approximately 20 seconds of staring at the television. Rev turns pre-emptively for when Slam's manager walks in; A large dark skinned man with a black turtle neck shirt and jeans with his blonde hair shaved along the side and cropped on the top.

"Slam what do you need?" He asks in a somewhat cheerful mood.

Slam explains exactly what Rev wants without sugar coating it at all.

"Woah, okay there, thanks for the joke, but…" The manager replies in surprise.

"I'm serious," Rev replies, trying to stand up in the conversation. "How much is the release clause?"

"It's 75,000 quasarlinium, you can't afford it." He insists. Rev has other ideas.

"If you give me just 5 minutes, I'll have the money in solid Quasarlinium. You stay right there." Rev says as he backs away to the exit and runs across to the VIP landing pads where he opens the doors from the inside. The security guards do not have the time to turn around to authenticate who has just done that, because Rev has flown off into the sky, which has grown towards a very dark grey; like a sunset on an overcast day. Rev flies back to base.

"I need 75,000 Quasarlinium right now." Rev asks to Ace as he looks at the simulator program that Tech is designing on a computer.

"What for?" Ace asks.

"To release Slam Tasmanian from his wrestling contract." Rev explains anxiously.

"That's a lot of money for someone of his age and ability in the wrestling circuit." Tech notes as he stands up to get one of the bars. "But we have to do this without raising suspicions and in the long run, this will be a very good deal."

"You think a kid walking offering to release someone from their contract is not raising suspicions enough?" Ace asks.

"It's better than taking him and therefore having someone look for him which might lead to all of us being found." Tech explains. He lifts one of the bars onto a lead plate using his magnetic levitation before plasma cutting a line thorough a section to give exactly the right weight. Once done, he picks it up with his own hands and hands it across to Rev.

"Just don't drop it while you're flying, then it would turn into an expensive cannonball." Tech warns.

"Got it." Rev says before zipping off across the city. At the same time, Tech begins to feel concerned for Rev, he quickly debates whether to tell this to everyone or not. He feels that Rev is doing most of the work whilst everyone stays here without a clue. Tec may be doing something right now, but he heels that it's not as significant as what Rev is doing. He's not jealous of the roadrunner's actions, but he's worried that he will burn out at some point but not in a fireball, a collapsed heap on the ground with is mind and body not sound. Tech knows that if he were doing all of these things, he'd be near breaking point, then again he is not the most mentally tough despite his intelligence.

"I hope he's alright." Tech says as he sits back down to work on the coding for the simulator program as he waits for the liquid fuel to be turned into gas so more of it can be stored on the jetpacks in order to achieve greater range. This option was considered when the design was initially made, but was deemed too volatile and costly to implement. However, Tech does not need to worry about the second part and he won't talk about the second.

"Rev?" Ace asks rhetorically. "He's fine, he's got everything under control."

"I'd be lying if I said that I didn't care about his wellbeing." Tech says. Although it does not convey exactly what he feels, in his extensive range of vocabulary, the right words elude him. The more words he thinks of, the more it changes the meaning of the words he has already said. It quickly becomes a task that he tries to solve using trail and error in his head, this would be a better task for a computer to do; a program that translates feelings into words.

"I'm not worried about him, he seems to be more confortable than most of us with this whole thing, I think he's enjoying it the most. Imagine having the freedom to be able to fly and travel great distances that those sorts of speeds, it would be immensely empowering." Ace postulates.

"I guess we've been unlucky in that regard." Tech replies. "Even me, I don't feel empowered about this magnetic levitation I have. It seems more like a party trick more than anything else."

"But you would rather still have it than not right?" Ace asks, knowing what answer he is going to get.

"I put that up on a plate for you, didn't I?" Tech replies.

"Yeah, you made that easy for me." Ace replies.

"It wasn't intentional." Tech adds.

"Whatever you say." Ace says as he stands up to look around for Lexi but he can't see her from their current position. She might be hidden behind the central column of the building. Ace walks around the table quietly as he is not wearing any shoes on and so his feet do not make as much noise. He cannot find her inside, so he heads up the stairs to the viewing platform; where she is standing away from the barrier, not looking at anything in particular before Ace comes up the stairs.

"Lexi, are you alright?" Ace asks. Lexi responds straight away, sounding a bit agitated.

"I can hear everything you say down there." Lexi responds. "I don't like all this change either. I have to concentrate on trying not to hear everything because it's not what I'm used to. Rev is the only one who isn't confused or overwhelmed, it's because his gift is speed and that can be used basically all the time. Your power is only good at destroying things and that is something we don't need right now."

"Who's to say that's all I'll be? The way I see it right now is that these powers are like weapons to a soldier; it's only an addition to we are. I'd be no different if I just had a double barrel laser blaster. That's why I'm going to make it up by doing other things, like mastering fighting and swordplay. I think that's where the difference is really going to come from, the power just gives me the added responsibility and motivation to do so. That's not to be a killing machine or anything, just to be better than who I am currently." Ace explains.

"It's so easy for you to say that." Lexi replies. "I'll wait until you back that up with actions."

"Am I not allowed to say that?" Ace asks, perplexed at why she is being so aggressive towards his pledges to become a better person.

"What I mean is that we don't really have a purpose, we're being rounded up like sheep simply because we are different with no reason for doing so other than that. And, since the government is certainly not behind this, this… person or company or conspiracy has some sort of plan for us. And you…" Lexi tirades with a controlled and measured anger that has been slowly building ever since she realised that she had changed. Ace, on the other hand, would like Tech to speed up with refurbishing the jetpacks. But he thinks that they should have a culture where internal rifts form in this group which leads to them becoming dysfunctional.

"I swear, this is all I know." Ace says defensively. "She said that there will be super villains that are created from this whole thing, and we're going to be the ones who stand against them." Ace says.

"Isn't that what the police and military do?" Lexi replies as if it should be common knowledge. "By your own logic, these powers aren't going to make us any better at doing that than if we had a blaster in our hands. This shouldn't be our job or duty or whatever this is called."

"Lexi, please. We have to stay together." Ace insists, moving closer to her to try and reassure her. However, she moves backwards, towards the glass panes that act as a guardrail along the outside of the building.

"I want to make my own decision about whether I want to do this, and right now it's not looking good for you." Lexi replies in a way that tries to show maximum disappointment towards what Ace is trying to do.

"Lexi, don't be like this." Ace pleads. Tech hears this commotion as he walks up the stairs, holding a jetpack in each hand by the straps. He doesn't want to be caught in the middle of this, so it makes him feel awkward as they both turn around once they both catch his eye so to speak.

"I'll just leave these here." Tech says inoffensively as he puts the jetpacks on the ground and turns 180 degrees to leave quickly, running down the stairs as quickly and quietly as possible. Ace can now diffuse and change the subject of this conversation.

"Come on, let's get out of here so we can use our powers." Ace says, trying to contain his excitement to the point where it is not offensive to Lexi but also hints that he is excited. Ace walks over to get his jetpack. As he swings it around his body to fix it to his torso, he notices that Lexi is not impressed and has not moved at all. Instead, she gives a look of indignation towards him with her arms folded over.

"Lexi." Ace complains. Futility and exasperation are creeping into speech and body language. Part of him want him to persist until she feels better, the other part wants to leave by himself; the first part is larger but diminishing in size as time passes by. "What do you want to do?"

Lexi's answer to that question hasn't been formulated, a symptom of being in a mope. As a result, all Ace can hear in response is silence. It may be an advantage to him knowing that Lexi can't come up with an answer, but to brag about it now would be insensitive.

"Please, let's get out of here, out of the city, and leave our problems here for a bit, you know what I am saying?" Ace asks. Still, Lexi does not reply back. There is an inner conflict that needs to be reconciled and balanced. Whilst she would like her situation to be better than it was if the meteor had not hit, she would also not like it to be taken to this extreme; where she is thrust into being someone who is completely out of character with who she is. It's a case of simply being a person who isn't frowned upon but also isn't held up on a pedestal. She would rather be respected rather than to command it.

"Maybe… you know what? I kind of just want to be a person, to feel like a person. We should stop trying to be heroes and instead let's try to be people." Lexi explains as if to stumble into that answer she was looking for. With a growing cheerfulness she lets her arms come to her side before getting close to Ace until they are almost touching each other. "Let's be people."

"But, we… are?" Ace says, slightly confused.

"Let's not go to the desert, let's stay here, order in, let's act like we are a bunch of friends rather than a group of individuals who are just here because someone told them so." Lexi says. There's something about what she says that resonates and agrees with Ace. That's not to say that his initial position was wrong, they are both right but in different areas, so there is no conflict between these two issues, and Ace chooses for it to remain that way.

"That's a great idea, just one problem. Who's going to be open after what has happened?" Ace asks. She chuckles at how he has overestimated the damage.

"No around here is going to be shut." Lexi answers. "Come on, let's go inside."

She walks up to the jetpack and picks one up and carries it by the strap down the stairs, leaving Ace to wonder what has just happened up here.

* * *

><p><strong>(3112/14): For all those reading, writing or both. A happy new year to you all.**


	10. Plans Made and Ruined

**Chapter 10 – Plans Made and Ruined**

"Keep him under for an hour longer, a physiological key must be somewhere." The lead doctor says across the bed of an MRI machine to the anaesthesiologist, who turns a dial on a small machine inside the control room that leads to a breathing tube that has been forced down Duck's throat as a mask does not fit. He sits, completely unconscious, under the observation of several doctors glued to the computer screens that show the results of tests and diagnostics run on their test subject. Their goal is simple and separated into three parts; figure how he teleports, reproduce whatever controls it and implant it onto someone else. This could lead to a whole new generation of biotechnology, allowing everyone to simply teleport wherever they want and a humungous profit for whoever can commercialise it or a technological advantage for those who want to use it. Protecting the doctors and specialists are a combination of special forces soldiers and automated tranquillisers set up on tripods around the building that can react fast enough if he manages to somehow escape.

Right now, they are very well afraid of that happening. Once he regains consciousness, what's to stop him from simply teleporting out of the room? Many different theories and devices have been suggested by physicists and security experts alike, but they can only contain his escape, nothing they can think of can prevent him from escaping apart from keeping him sedated. They can't keep him sedated forever, otherwise he will be dead. However, if they can prove and reproduce this ability before that time comes, then maybe keeping him sedated forever would be the ideal situation.

"We have to stop focusing on the brain, look at how underdeveloped it is!" A neurologist remarks.

"It's the only way based on what we know." Another replies. "Maybe he can use more capacity and somehow… that sounds stupid."

"It has to be in his brain somewhere!" A physicist reiterates. "How else can he consciously interact with quantum tunnels?"

"You take a look at these results then, because they show a normal, if not slightly retarded, brain. There's nothing here that provides evidence to what you are saying." The neurologist replies.

"Keep testing, do everything you can before he flies out of here and we lose the biggest scientific discovery in decades."

**The Base**

"You said how many?" Ace asks again, confused about the number he just heard. "There's small, medium, large and extra large if you're feeling ambitious; but that's way too much."

Slam disagrees.

"Okay. 20, extra larges for the big guy." Ace says, more to himself to confirm the size of the order he has asked for. "I hope there's something else in there other than just a stomach."

Slam takes this literally and begins to answer back with all the internal organs he can list.

"It was a joke. We're going to work out just fine." Ace reiterates gladly. "I'll go downstairs and wait for the order." Slam would like to sit down but he would take up an entire couch, meaning everyone else would have to squeeze in on the other one. No one else is really making an effort to talk with Slam, but neither is he making the same effort in the other direction. In the mean time, Lexi sets up her gaming console she brought back with her from a brief trip to the outside.

"You've got so many controllers." Tech notes as she releases the drawstring on a grey bag that spills out with several small black objects. Tech realises the mistake he made of going too early. "Oh."

Instantly, Rev swoops in before Lexi has a chance to pick up the spilled ones or even to open her mouth to correct Tech. He takes the bag and begins placing more holographic projectors around the area, on the ground, attached to walls and windows as well as on the roof.

"All done. Now what games do you have? Although if you wanted a chance of winning I think you might have brought something that doesn't rely on reaction speed or just speed in general which means you've probably brought some puzzle games but I'm good at those as well so that leave basically games that come down to chance which aren't really fun because they don't involve skill and…" Rev explains quickly.

"What works in theory…" Lexi begins to say.

"…doesn't always work in practice. I've heard it before." Rev says as they both stand across from each other like two fighters coming in for a weigh in. "But enough talk, unless the console's voice activated of course, let's see who will win."

"No room for three?" Tech asks as the tension rises even further.

Slam wants to join in as well, even if he doesn't know that he is out of his depth in terms of intensity and skill. His fighting skills are best left in the real world, they don't extend fully into the virtual one.

**Downstairs**

"10 minutes?" He says to himself as he enters into the large corporate style lobby in the bottom, with designer chairs and other furnishings that are never seen outside of a furniture store because of the price tag. The ceiling is double storey to let the light in but it's night time now, even if the light has already been like this for the past few hours. "That's a bit long, even for an order of this size."

"Evening." The male receptionist from behind a large desk says to Ace as he comes to a stop near one of the two large stone faced square columns in the foyer. Ace puts a hand up to acknowledge his presence before turning around to lean against the column to face back towards the elevators.

"I didn't see you come in here." The receptionist replies to Ace. He turns around and sees the man walk around his desk towards him with a thin silver holographic projection bar, used in tablets, towards him.

"I came in from the basement, underground." Ace replies, lying ever so easily thanks to his acting skills.

"This building doesn't have a basement." The receptionist replies, no amount of acting can get around that fact. So Ace decides to face whatever he has coming for him head on. He imagines it as being one of those minor make or break situations that can expose your operation or who you really are.

"What do you want? I've just come from the top floor." Ace replies, prepared for anything from a gun being pulled on him to unarmed combat to…

"So you're the new tenants. But, however you came in here, Just make sure you sign into the building next time. Important new procedure to account for the building's occupants in the what happened today." He replies. Ace is slightly disappointed with the bureaucratic answer.

"Okay." Ace says, but there's still a hint of disappointment in his voice that forgot to remove.

"If you have an I.D. card then it will automatically scan and fill in the details." He adds. Ace doesn't have I.D. on him, that was destroyed in the meteor blast on the set where he was working, so he has to fill in the sign in sheet manually. He wonders whether or not to use a fake name, but chooses to give his real one considering he doesn't think there will be dire consequences further on for doing so.

"Thanks… Ace." He replies, turning around to go back to his station, wondering how simultaneously dorky and cool that name is whilst comparing it to his own. The rabbit with that name feels the vibration in his thigh where his mobile phone is. He takes it out and receives the call.

"Hello."

"Ace, there's an urgent situation that you have to take care of as soon as you can." Zadavia warns, sounding really stressed in her voice, which conveys across how important this must be. "I've located another person which the government claims to posses some sort of teleportation ability. I'm uploading some surveillance footage to your phone."

It shows the inside of a prison, where a black-feathered duck is teleporting in and out of his cell and into another one.

"Okay." Ace replies, acknowledging what he has seen to be genuine. "What's the details?"

"That was taken from a holding cell underneath the 16th District courthouse about 2 hours ago. I believe he is now being held in an underground facility in the army's top-secret research and development centre, where they will try to extract his abilities from him in order to develop super soldiers. You have to get him out of there before they can find out how it works." Zadavia instructs.

"One question." Ace says as he consciously reminds himself that whatever he says might be overheard by the seeming innocuous receptionist, so he best not divulge anything secret. "Do you know how to remove it?"

"Yes, but it is painful and draining to do so." Zadavia says. "It is not something one can do easily without the right equipment, which they, thankfully, do not have. You best get there right now, directions have been uploaded to your device."

At this point, Lexi comes out of the ground floor elevator to meet with Ace.

"We'll get right on it." Ace says confidently, but inside he is a bit nervous about how to do such a thing.

"You need to come back upstairs." Lexi urges him, holding the elevator door open.

"Yes, we need to hurry." Ace slips, walking into the elevator as if nothing strange has just happened. As they both stand side by side, facing the elevator doors, Ace comes to realise what has just happened, there's a little happy smile on Lexi's face as she watched him turn from being normal into the sudden realisation of what happened.

"You heard that?" Ace asks. She shrugs her shoulders in response.

"Maybe I just know." Lexi jokes.

"Or maybe you have super hearing." Ace replies as they reach the top.

"That's the joke." Lexi says flatly in response as they both walk out together. "This is the wrong floor."

"Yeah." Ace replies, holding one arm out to keep the doors open and the cabin still at this floor. "What's with the change? One minute, you want to stay inside and now you want to help on this dangerous mission. I…I just want to know where you stand."

Lexi needs a second to think about it.

"I'm nervous, before I heard about that job, I guess I was trying to run as far away as possible from all the consequences, trying to ignore it. But when I heard all the details." Lexi explains before taking a deep breath. "I have to turn around and face it head on, like young Siward in Macbeth."

"Who?" Ace asks, dropping his arm from holding the elevator and needing to raise it again to stop the door from closing.

"Basically, and I'm paraphrasing, but it's better to face things head on even if you fail rather than to let it overcome you whilst you run away." Lexi says. "So, I need to turn around and stop being…"

The words are not within Lexi's grasp that can describe who she is and who she wants to be. She knows that those two people must be different. Ace drops his hand and presses the button for the top floor. The stainless steel doors shut on the unoccupied floor.

"Whatever, I'm ready." Lexi says, shaking off the uncertainty of before.

**5 Minutes later**

"These should be able to get you inside through the automated checkpoints with these fake passes and identification." Tech says to Ace as he passes across an Identification card on a yellow lanyard. "There are two booths that are manned so you have to use your acting skills to get by."

"Where did you get all of this intel?" Ace asks.

"I've been in there a lot of times." Tech says as he digs into his pocket to show an exact ID card that Ace has just received except with his own credentials placed on it. "Mostly research."

"You're saying you have all the identification and knowledge of the building layout," Lexi says. "But you won't go inside yourself?"

"I'm not that type of guy. I'm better off behind the scenes." Tech explains. "Now, there might be scientific questions that they will ask you. So to get around this, you'll wear this earpiece with me talking to you on the other end. Simply repeat what I say and make it sound like you know what you're talking about."

Tech hands over a tiny device the size of a small pill with one side made of rubber with a speaker in the middle to listen into and the other side is a radio transmitter.

"Don't worry about losing transmission. I'll route the communications through their systems." Tech says. "Also, you can't take that sword in with you, they perform a body search at the first perimeter gate. Just one more thing."

Tech turns around and gently taps one finger against the desk before lifting it towards Ace.

"Hold still."

Tech moves in closer towards Ace's forehead and presses the tiny clear sticker on that's invisible to the naked eye.

"I just put a camera on your forehead. It won't show up on the scans as it has the same radar signature as a speck of dust. This should be all you need so I can monitor you on the inside." Tech explains.

"And once I find this duck, how do I get him out without being suspicious?" Ace asks. Tech doesn't want to answer.

"About that…" Tech replies, scratching his head.

"You're going for the movie style, easy way in hard/no way out?" Ace replies. "Come on Tech, I thought these plans would be better thought out and a bit more comprehensive. Focusing mostly on getting me out alive and not just for your entertainment."

"We'll, I only had 5 minutes to plan this out, so, let's just work with it, improvise." Tech replies. "Actors can improvise."

"Whatever, let's get this done." Ace says.

"I'll come with you." Lexi says. "If something happens, I'll get you out."

Utilitarianism and emotions have their own little conflict inside Ace, whether or not to deny Lexi from doing what she has offered. He decides not to stand in the way.

"Okay, but only if I'm really in trouble, no pre-emptive rush or anything." Ace insists with her safety at the forefront of his mind.

"I don't know if you've forgotten about me but is there anything more me to do or should I stay here and help Tech or show Slam the place. I don't really want to be in the front line." Rev says.

"Okay Rev." Ace replies. "But your speed would help."

"That's okay Ace and thanks for saying that. Maybe I'll change your mind and come to swoop in and save you at the end." Rev nervously replies.

"Whatever works for ya." Ace says. "Okay, Let's go."

He picks up a jetpack along with Lexi and they both head up the stairs, ready to leave. Just as Ace is about to take off, he is held back by Lexi; not just with a hand, but with her whole body as she briefly hugs him tightly before stepping back as if she'd just done the wrong thing. In order to get away from it, she jet's off first, followed shortly by a very confused Ace.


	11. Going Deeper

**Chapter 11 – Going Deeper**

It takes the entire journey across the city for him to mentally prepare himself for this mission. He tells himself many times that the consequences are real, the weapons are real, and the mission is real with real lives at stake. Ace points out a nearby rooftop to land on, which is what they do.

"You stay here and don't attract any attention, and please don't do anything rash." Ace pleads.

"I understand, but give me the word and I'll get you out." Lexi replies. Ace nods in response.

"You can hear me Tech?" Ace asks.

"It's working." Tech replies. "The guards don't know personally who works inside, they rely on the system for the facial recognition."

"Got it." Ace says as he touches down in an alley near the entrance of the facility surrounded by light blue electric arcs jumping between powerful poles that conduct such charges. There is only a tiny gap where a bulletproof glass cubed shaped kiosk sits, the only personnel entry into the facility. Ace looks around for a place to store his jetpack.

"Lexi, I'm leaving my jetpack down here, grab it when I've left the area." Ace says into the alleyway in no direction in particular, hoping that she will hear it and do as he wants. He walks out of the alleyway, checking that he still has the identification on him, and makes his way a little bit nervously towards the kiosk.

"Lexi says she heard you." Tech says as Ace walks closer and closer, he notices the two guards inside the kiosks noticing him. Once he crosses the street, all the guards look at are him. Pre-emptively, two of them walk towards him to confront him.

"This is a restricted area, we ask you to turn around immediately or face prosecution for trespassing on government property." One of the helmeted guards instructs.

"Hey, I have clearance." Ace replies, showing him his I.D. card. One of the guards takes a look at it before handing it through a tiny slit in a stainless steel gap at desk height for another guard to check. He puts it against a scanner which beeps in approval. His details appear on the computer screen which match what they physically see.

"Okay, step inside. Look forward whilst inside." They say, allowing him to pass through the now opening glass doors at the main entrance. He steps into the glass box and onto the metal grating floor, which seems to have no bottom below in the black abyss. The glass doors ahead of him stays shut as the glass doors behind him shut to seal Ace inside whilst the security system searches him wirelessly. Ace looks directly ahead at the short corridor beyond that leads to what looks to be an elevator. He waits and waits in silence before the glass doors in front begin to slide open.

"There's an opening on the left just outside where you need to get your I.D. card. When you've done that, walk forward to the elevator." Tech instructs, Ace does what he says, retrieving his I.D. card before walking forward and calling the large elevator that's nearly twice the size of a large elevator at a shopping mall, all for three people; Ace and the two guards who guard the elevator.

"Down to the bottom?" One of the guards asks.

"Yes." Ace replies, which makes the guard shut the door to the outside world. Once the doors shut, he thinks of a montage of films where the hero or otherwise takes out the guards whilst being surrounded in a lift before it reaches his destination. Ace reminds himself again to not try anything stupid, this is quite enough action for him right now anyway.

"On the bottom floor, each door is locked with biometric safeguards like retina scans. That I.D. card contained a virus which uploaded your details to the system when it was read, confusing the system to make it think it was already there. It's got your retina pattern and fingerprints that I got earlier." Tech explains, pleased with his own work. "You'll need those to operate the doors when inside.

The large elevator doors slide away to allow Ace to walk into the brightly lit facility of low ceilings and white painted concrete walls and floors with slightly brighter lines on the ground that run in different directions for reasons he does not know.

"Okay, he should be in one of the medical rooms if they're performing tests, I'll guide you through the building." Tech instructs.

Ace wanders around blindly to Tech's instructions whilst trying to keep an independent account of what is going on in case he needs to break from the coyote's directions. All the rooms he can see are like what science laboratories would look like if someone cleaned them to within an inch of their life. Everything is so clean and white, from the polycarbonate backsplashes on the walls to the lab coats of the scientists inside. All of this is bathed in sterile, white LED lights from above.

"Go right here, he must be in one of these rooms." Tech says as Ace looks down a corridor that's almost 50 metres long. He wanders slowly, looking into each of the rooms without being too nosey, making it seem like he's taking a casual glance at what is happening.

"Stop, on your right." Tech says. Ace looks to his right and sees the duck stuck in an MRI machine with several tubes stuck inside of him. "I know some of these people." Tech says as he looks into the identities of those in the view booth with all of the computers and equipment inside.

"They're trying to extract whatever makes it work from him." Ace says quietly as he sees the people inside beginning to argue between each other. "And it doesn't seem that they're doing that well."

Tech waits for a second to look at what they are doing to see if he can decipher any details. As he does this, the conversation inside is escalating even further to the point of a physical confrontation, whilst other back away in their seats.

"You should wait this out, go walk around the building and come back in a minute and see what they are doing." Tech says. Ace turns away from the violence happening in the room to have a look around at other things that are happening in this facility. Tech explains the things that are happening in the other rooms; weapons development, deadly viruses, materials experimentation… Ace manages to understand some of the terminology that Tech uses but he gets more information from what he sees rather than what he hears. His eyesight has improved to become much sharper and clear even at great distances, but he doesn't feel any noticeable difference. When he comes back around the room where Duck is held, he notices that they are in process of moving him onto a hospital bed on wheels with all of the diagnostic machines being placed in a small shelf underneath where his head is.

"This is bad news." Tech announces. "They think the change is physiological."

"What's happening?" Ace asks.

"Go back down the corridor and enter the last room on the right." Tech says urgently. "And get in there quickly."

Ace jogs with haste down the corridor without making much noise. He sees that the room Tech wanted him to go has one clean and gleaming stainless steel table in the middle. Around the outside of the rear wall are thin cupboards that go the height of the room and around the left wall is a bench with large industrial sinks. Instead of the concrete he's used to seeing, the walls are covered in white tiles with the floor being made from the hard plastic melamine in a pale green colour. The whole floor seems to sink down towards a grate directly below the table so it can drain the entire room.

"In the cupboards are full body protective suits and face masks, you have to put them on before they get in here. It will conceal your identity." Tech says quickly. Ace opens the door and goes straight to the back of the room where he finds a protective white suit and pink breathing mask with two small extensions on the outside to filter the incoming air. Ace takes it off the hook, unzips the back and begins to climb inside.

"This is way too big." Ace complains. It is nearly half a metre too big for Ace.

"On the back it there are two buttons that control the size, up and down." Tech explains as Ace reaches around and finds the down button. He presses on it which makes the fit become better and better until it is a near perfect with with one obvious problem.

"There's no room for my ears." Ace says, feeling them bend down to his shoulders.

"Just go with it." Tech says tensly. "We can't do anything about that."

Ace puts on the face mask around the part of the body suit that covers his head.

"Gloves. In the cupboard." Tech says, thinking that at any second they could all begin to cram inside of the room. Ace puts the black rubber gloves around his hands so that they go over the suit. Once that is done, he shuts the cupboard and mentally prepares himself in the one second it takes for him to turn around and look up for being called upon to do things he may not have clue about. After five seconds he calms himself down as the annoyance of having to consciously make sure he does not make his ears erect and instead keeps them flopped beside his face.

"What's this room for?" Ace asks with his voice partially muffled by the mask.

"mmm, Lots of things." Tech answers, unwilling to tell him what it is, worried that it will force him into making poor decisions. "It's a multi purpose room."

"But what's it's purpose now?" Ace asks. He can't get an answer, because even with his flopped ears covered by the protective suit, he can hear the advancing group of people punctuated by the low roar of wheels rolling. As they start to enter into the room, Ace decides to make himself useful and hold the door open for the others. It's during this time that he's able to get a close up look at the situation and a possible solution to how to get the duck out of here. They moves the rolling bed next to the fixed table.

"Samples, get them done." Someone shouts as everyone moves in like in a rehearsed routine that isn't quite perfected but very close. The 10 or so people in the room hardly collide as they get their suits and tools ready for the job at hand.

"You, blood now." One commands to Ace, who is the least active out of everyone in the room.

"On it." Ace replies, but there is no acknowledgement of what he has said.

"First cupboard from the left under the sinks, top shelf, far right. Syringes, grab one." Tech instructs. Ace understood the first part, but the rest is lost in all the action that's happening in front of him. He wanders over to that cupboard and bends down to look inside. There are so many different things so neatly organised in equally sized trays.

"Top left." Tech reminds him. Ace sees it and grabs one; he's never held one before, but knows how it works.

"Go to the left arm and pierce the basilic vein." Tech says but realises that eh has to dumb his language down into plain English. "Where the arm bends, the big vein there."

Ace walks over to the side and looks briefly at the tubes and other monitoring equipment that is hooked up to Duck. When Ace inspects the place where Tech was talking about, he sees that there is already a needle inside of him in that position that is connected to an intravenous drip.

"On the other side." Tech says as he mentally disciplines himself from making the mistake of not predicting that there will be a bung needle inside of him to make it easier to inject things into him. Ace walks around the head of the moving bed, bumping into it lazily, before taking off the plastic protective cover around the needle and reaches over the table to position the needle over the correct spot. He can't see the vein past the black feathers, but approximates; it does not need to be perfect he thinks. With a slight pause before hand, he grits his teeth and pierces the skin. The now oxygenated blood turns red and begins to fill up the syringe. Once it nears the top, he takes it out. He just hopes that this isn't going to take much longer, the longer he stays in here the more chance there is for him to screw up. He puts the syringe on the table and waits for further instructions.

Once everyone else has done their jobs, they also wait for further instructions.

"Get the tools ready." He shouts, anxiously wanting to get this done as quickly as possible despite his specimen being dazed on the bed. People start to bring out trays of carefully laid out surgical tools; scalpels, hooks, staples, drills, saws, the picture becomes grimmer and grimmer. Ace just hopes that his plan is going to work sooner rather than later, otherwise plan B will be messy, deadly and highly risky. Which is why he's thinking it might be better to abandon plan B if it comes to that, what's the risk of the chance to save one life? Too much in this case, especially since they don't know exactly what kind of person they are getting in return.

"Everyone ready?"

In any case, Ace will make plan A last for as long as it can in the hope that it will work.

"Hold on a second." Ace interrupts, drawing the attention of everyone in the room as he crouches down to look at the two machines to make it look like he knows what all of the readouts mean. "I think this machine here isn't working properly."

"Doesn't matter for now, he'll be dead in a few minutes." He replies, frustrated that such a trivial problem has been brought up. He turns to someone with three syringes of different coloured liquids inside each one of them. "Get it done."

The first syringe is brought up from the tray and is ready to be connected to the bung and into Duck's bloodstream. A split second decision is made; the Duck must not die. He bursts from his position around the top of the bed and grabs the syringe in the hand of the masked medical worker. Ace briefly tussles with him before managing to knock it out of his hand and onto the floor. Others stand in disbelief whilst the more focused one's head straight to the alarm. Ace only has enough time to see them reaching for the small red, outlined box on the sidewall. He looks too deeply at it, so he blasts the alarm box to smithereens which makes them retract their arms faster than know. The wall around the alarm box has a small chunk taken out of it, but there is not much structural damage to speak of in the reinforced concrete. The explosion wakes the duck as if from a terrible nightmare.

"Ahhhhhh, what was that!" Duck shouts as he leans up from his bed with his hands clutching the sides of his head. As soon as Duck wakes up, Ace heaps himself over Duck in order to be in physical contact with him.

"Get us out of here!" Ace shouts to Duck.

"Okay!" Duck shouts back before teleporting himself, Ace and the hospital bed with all of the diagnostic equipment attached to him out of the room and into the corridor in the same building, barely 20 metres away.

"That's not far enough." Ace complains as he stands up beside the hospital bed. He stops the doctors begin to move out of the room and inevitably spotting him. Ace begins to rip off the pads connected to the diagnostic machine whilst keeping an eye on the people that are rushing towards him. Duck does not like this as each time, feathers are being ripped out of his skin, leaving small patches where those pads used to be. Ace does not have the time to completely free the duck from all of the pads, he has to stand up to the doctors to stop them from calling another alarm.

"Everybody stop!" Ace commands, everyone else more or less does what eh says with their heads turned towards him. "Or I shoot!"

"You're the same, the same." The leader doctor replies.

"Get us to the surface." Ace whispers to Duck, holding onto him by placing an arm on his chest.

"How far is that?" Duck asks.

"50 metres, and lose the bed." Ace whispers.

"I'll try." Duck says before teleporting again, they arrive about 4 metres above the ground so they both land with a thud on the hard concrete ground, surrounded by several rapid action units who have been or are in the process of arriving by VTOL aircraft in response to the alert given by the two surveillance officers in the kiosk, monitoring the security cameras. Instantly, over 20 guns are all drawn in their direction.

"Hands up now." A soldier shouts towards the pair of them. Duck instantly does so, whereas Ace reluctantly does the same, which also breaks his physical connection with duck. The soldiers form a semi circle and begin to close in on them both when suddenly, a huge explosion rips out behind them; the glass kiosk has been fractured into thousands of pieces with the occupants inside showed with debris. The soldiers turn their heads for just a second, which gives Duck enough time to teleport himself out of the situation, leaving Ace on his own, clutching at thin air as he tries to ride the quantum tunnels with this stranger. A second explosion is much closer, it blows a large hole in the ground which sends concrete flying up a few metres and down to the ground. By this time, Ace knows where the explosions are coming from, the brief pink flash beforehand gives it away. He doesn't debate whether or not she should be doing this, it's a welcome distraction.

There's almost no time to focus in on the top of the building where Lexi is hiding, because he is plucked from the ground in a ball of fire. The soldiers now try to shoot at Rev, but he has escaped way too quickly for their aim. Rev moves away from the base before bending his flight path to link with where Lexi is flying away, with the second jetpack hooked around one of her control levers. Rev slows down and flies as closely as he can to her. Lexi takes her hand briefly off the left control lever to grab the jetpack and reaches out to her left to hand it off. Rev flies a little bit higher so that Ace is the same height as Lexi and he grabs it by the strap. In the air, he puts it around one of his arms but can't put it around the other because he has to hold onto Rev.

"Let go!" Ace shouts. Rev knows what he is trying to do but also doesn't want to see him fall to his death.

"Okay, but I'm going to fly underneath in case you need help!" Rev shouts before letting the rabbit go and diving underneath him, acting like a safety net.

He doesn't need to do so, Ace manages to do it in less than 2 seconds which gives him plenty of room before he would have hit the tops of buildings. Once the three of them recover where they are flying at and equal height, they look at each other with a mild sense of accomplishment. Occasionally they look down and see that the city is more chaotic that they know. People are walking the streets. Even though the primary task was not completed and they now have the military breathing down their backs, but nevertheless; they have succeeded because they are all still alive.


	12. Duck Wrangling

**Chapter 12 – Duck Wrangling**

Ace, Lexi and Rev all land on a rooftop under the darkened skies covered by dark clouds that block out most of what's left of the sunlight as the evening draws to a close. Each of the three are still high on adrenaline, having experienced the thrill of the chase.

"Tech, we got out, but the duck flew away." Ace reports to Tech, who is left with Slam in their penthouse base.

"That's, incredible." Tech says with disbelief. "You got out?"

"Yes, and we're going duck hunting." Ace declares eagerly.

"Don't worry Ace, I'll bring him right here, I know exactly where he is." Rev replies before flying away in a dead straight line to where his target is, hoping to swoop in and pluck him from the ground like he did with Ace. He spots him running along the street in the open. Rev speeds up even further as he dives in, locked onto his target like a missile. Duck doesn't even know what hits him and takes him off the ground before he's tens of metres in the air. Panicking, he teleports out of the roadrunner's grasp down to ground level. Rev goes in for a second time, Duck is more prepared than before, but that counts for little considering his reactions were too slow. Once again, Rev picks him off the ground but the same thing happens. Rev can only make it a few seconds before Duck takes himself out of his hands and down to somewhere nearby. Rev knows that there has to be a better solution than raw speed, which means that he can't do it alone. He flies back to Ace and Lexi, who have both begun to try and fly after him.

"I can't get him, every time I do he teleports right out of my hands. I'm fast but I can't take him back to our place quickly enough!" Rev complains.

"Take it easy, you did what you could." Ace consoles to the young Rev.

"We have to convince him to come with us, otherwise he just teleports away." Lexi explains.

"And I think I know how to do that." Ace replies. "Rev, show me where he is. We have to sneak up on him without making him frightened."

Rev leads the way over slightly more than a kilometre to where he says Duck is hiding.

"He's behind that dumpster." Rev points out Duck couched down below the height of the dumpster in order to not be seen. Ace slowly controls his descent, aiming to land behind Duck but not in order to scare him. He lands on the ground with Duck seeing him just as he makes contact with the planet.

"You again?! Duck shouts, standing up whilst his arrogance simultaneously balloons his confidence. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't quack out of here."

Ace would really like to make a joke out of that, but the tension of the situation forces him to bottle it for later.

"Quack?" Ace asks in confusion.

"When one acquires super powers, you have to give it a super name. I call it, quantum quack!" Duck explains whilst also trying to stand up and dominate his opponent.

"We can talk about names later." Ace explains. "But we have to get you to safety, inside that lab they were going to dissect you into little pieces until they find out how you can teleport. So, if nothing else, you at least owe me that for saving your life."

"Pah! I don't need your, help…" Duck says, still trying to be defiant and arrogance. But as his confidence is inflated by arrogance, so too is it burst when that arrogance goes away. He falls to his knees and grasps at Ace's in order to beg for his safety."… oh please help me, get me out of here."

"Grab on." Ace offers. Duck put his arms around Ace's waist before Ace takes off into the air and joins the others.

"How far away is this place? My arms are not built for this." Duck complains to Ace.

"Just hang on and you'll find out." Lexi jokes. Ace makes a desperate hand signal by shaking his outstretched hand near his neck in order to tell her to cut out the jokes.

"Oh, you're funny." Duck says sarcastically. "We're going to get along really well together."

"Let's move." Ace says. They all keep flying or hold on tighter as they make their way back to base. Below the four of them, in the streets below, they notice that it is not how it was before. Cars are still being driven but erratically, groups of people, running from place to place whilst others stay away from them on the sides of the streets. Neither of them are able to get a good look at the details, but it's not resembling total lawlessness, but neither is it what they are accustomed to. After a tense set of minutes, Duck can finally let go and not die by falling tens of metres to an unforgiving concrete or tarmac surface below.

"I'm going to lie down." Duck says wearily, holding his sore arms down by his side. "Where do I do that?"

"The couch." Ace replies.

"No, c'mon, seriously. Got anything better?" Duck replies, but everyone walks past and down the stairs to which Duck follows. Tech comes to meet them at the door holding a set of new inventions.

"Did you get him?" Tech asks before he sees for himself what they risked their lives for. "He looked taller."

"So you're the leader of this joint, what's with the get up? What's this place? If this is a government agency I want no part of it and if this is a prank then it's not funny." Duck says before looking for the location of a hidden camera. "Wherever you are, you're not laughing now."

Everyone is wondering how to deal with the egotistical duck.

"This isn't any of those things." Ace says slowly and deliberately, making sure every word is heard correctly.

"Then what is it?" Duck asks.

"I'm not exactly sure myself." Ace answers candidly. "We were told to save you, so that's what we did."

"So, you're all super mercenaries." Duck says, suddenly intrigued, dollar signs shine in his eyes. This tone of voice is a lot more excited. "How much are you paid?"

"We're not mercenaries." Ace replies.

"Okay, then what is this? I want an answer or I'm not coming back here!" Duck shouts, making an ultimatum that must be resolved quickly. Ace turns to the others, he's tried all he can't but rationality does not work with someone so volatile.

"We're a bunch of superheroes." Lexi says kindly. Ace doesn't like the term and tech was just on verge of refining his own answer but now it will not be heard. "And we want you to be part of it."

"That's not what your brother said." Duck replies, which makes Ace and Lexi feel simultaneously awkward about one another. "He said that your boss told you to get me, I want to talk to this boss of yours.

Suddenly, the holographic projection system that Rev set up comes alive in a brilliant array of colours, all of the colours that each of the six people inside this room are represented in the background; pink, red, yellow, orange, green and purple.

"Hello Duck." Zadavia introduces herself. If her intention was to scare him, it doesn't work. This sort of menace simply flies straight over his head as if it didn't exist.

"Listen, how much are these people being paid? Because I want at least double what they get paid if you want me to stay. Apparently, I'm a valuable commodity now I have super powers." Duck demands.

"Yes, but you're more valuable to us if you're alive." Ace explains.

"I will provide everything that you need, that is why none of you will be paid." Zadavia explains. The first five are more comfortable with this decision, even Slam, as they run this the implication of her statement through their heads. With money you buy things you want, but if all the things you want are given to you for free, then what is the point of being paid? Duck doesn't like the sound of no cash in his hand.

"What?!" Duck shouts angrily. "That's it!"

Duck teleports out of the room and out of their sight. Half a second later, Lexi hears something, shouting and screaming from nearby.

"Rev!" She shouts.

Rev knows where Duck is, and it requires him to spring into action as fast as possible. Without warning everyone else, he sprints out of the room and out of the building, by the time the internal air has stopped swirling around because of Rev's speed, he returns, holding a terrified Duck in his arms. He half drops, half puts him on the ground because whilst standing he can't carry that much weight. Duck gasps for air, heaving the life giving oxygen into his body. Slowly, he gets to his feet, where Zadavia is still on the line, looking down at Duck's failed escape attempt.

"You do not know the scope of your own powers, you do not know how they work. If you want to master your powers, then you must stay with them and train." Zadavia explains.

"Super heroes don't need to train." Duck declares. To varying degrees, everyone else disagrees, with Ace being entirely against that statement.

"You may have powers but at the end of the day you're still a person. These powers don't come added with 17 different martial arts." Tech comments. "So far as I know."

"Tech is right. These powers are only one part of you. You must develop your own skills, both physical and mental if you want to achieve your potential." Zadavia concurs. "Above all, you must work together as a team and as a team of six you will be more effective than six individuals. Zadavia, out."

"Tech, have you finished that simulator program yet?" Ace asks.

"It's almost finished." Tech reassures him.

"And while you're at it smarty pants, why don't you make me a nice superhero outfit that will be worthy of my powers." Duck says.

"More like your ego." Lexi says across to Ace who struggles to contain himself. The consequence is that Duck overhears him.

"What are you laughing at?" Duck shouts. By his side, his palms are starting to glow orange like fire is erupting form them. However it's not fire that's coming from his hands, it's more like the consistency of plasma. "You can't l…"

Duck raises his hand to point right at Ace's chest, but he discovers that it's not what he expected to see. Ace takes a couple of steps back as he approaches him, just in case what's coming out of his hands is deadly.

"Calm down Duck." Ace replies.

"Woah, what's with these?" He asks himself. "I've got a new power! One that looks dangerous and powerful, so I guess that means I should be the leader of this group. If anybody against me, Raise your arm!"

"That's not how it works." Ace warns. Both wanting and not wanting to challenge him. A violent conflict between people with superpowers will have similarly super bad consequences.

"I say that I'm the leader, do you, want to challenge me?!" Duck says, becoming every more agitated as Ace backs away further whilst Duck advances on him.

"I don't want to." Ace replies.

"Because you'll lose." Duck says.

"Because we'll both be dead." Ace replies. Everyone else tries to stay close to action without being too close to be involved. This is tension at it's highest and everyone but Duck is trying to find a solution that will defuse it quickly. They want this situation to stop, but also don't want to become a target. Rev wants to dash in there and trip Duck over or knock him to the ground for Ace to pounce on him. Tech is looking helplessly at the collection of weapons, none of which can stun Duck, only kill or severely hurt. Slam wants to fight, but afraid that he will get hit by the strange energy Duck is emitting from his palms. Lexi want to zap Duck with her pink beam, but she's worried that she can't control the power of it. As milliseconds pass, everyone wants to use their strategies but also don't want to. Lexi is the first one to gain the courage to tip the balance. She thinks very deliberately about keeping the power down. She aims at the lifeless central concrete column and lets out a tiny beam that does no visible damage to the wall. With the situation overcoming her worries about hurting Duck along with his obnoxiousness, she aims for his back, hoping to briefly stun him for long enough for Ace to do something.

She shoots, it's aimed correctly and the power is what she wanted, but it could not have gone worse. As she initiated her plan, Rev did so with his. As a result, Rev gets in the way of the beam, and he is hit in his lower back. It stuns the fast moving bird and turns him into a stunned projectile that slides along the ground with speed until he collides with the window with a thud. Lexi sees what she has done and instantly wants to hide again. Her brief spell of confidence has withered away in a heartbeat. Ace and Duck are both put off by the sliding bird, but Ace regains his focus and attention the quickest, meaning he's able to get the drop on Duck and push him to the ground. Duck loses his glowing hands as he falls whilst Slam runs to pin him down like he's practised countless times in wrestling. Duck can't even move his wrists from Slam's vice like grip. Meanwhile, Tech stands in the back, as is his normal position, watching it all unfold, unable to do anything as Lexi begins to look for a place to hide. Rev gets up from being dazed on the opposite side of the room and spots Lexi, knowing that she will need to be consoled after this accident. He runs right back to her to block her from going anywhere.

"Lexi please it wasn't your fault it was a coincidence and look at me I'm fine it's not your fault. I'm the one that got in the way" Rev replies. Lexi wants to sidestep him and keep going, but Rev is too fast at stepping side to side. "No hard feelings at all, it was an accident."

No matter how hard Rev tries to console her, his quick talking consolation does little on the face of it, she still thinks it was her fault.

"Let me go." She asks. Rev stops moving and allows Lexi to pass by, but he changes his mind as soon as she passes by. He kneels down and holds her back by wrapping his arms around her waist in order to hold her back. It may be a childish gesture, but he's becoming desperate.

"Please don't go off into the city for no reason other than your own self-loathing. It wasn't your fault; I could say it over and over until it gets in your head because that it is the truth! So, I'm not going to let you leave! I'm going to stand up for you even when you're not." Rev says whilst he stands up as he becomes self-confident. Lexi is having trouble trying to get around his devotion to helping her out of this. He has her best interests at heart, but she does not. Thanks to Rev's pleading, it might have just turned her around. She breathes in deeply, forcing herself to accept Rev's version of events instead of her own. She leans forward and wraps her arms around him, Rev gets uncomfortable from not being used to love or even experienced it so nicely and sweetly before.

"Thanks." Lexi says into his ear. "You're a good person, and a good friend."

She lets go of Rev and steps around him to go back to the group, however, Rev is the slowest he has been all day; completely still for a few seconds apart from one blink. His head turns around swiftly to look at what is happening behind him, as light as a feather from that hyped up feeling he has in his stomach, and that's not part of his super speed. Initially, he can't figure out where it came from. When he calculates the answer, he feels awkward about it. Lexi should be with Ace, he thinks. A few steps forward makes him concentrate on the events that he missed out on. Duck is still pinned to the ground by Slam but Duck is more annoyed instead of fighting back. Ace and Tech are a tight conversation together by the tables. Rev seems to be out of place, without a role or a task to do, therefore he needs a task in order to occupy himself whilst everyone sorts this out.

"If we're going to have to put up with him then we have to calm him down." Ace says quietly to Tech.

"I can quickly make some restraining devices to cover his hands, but's only a short term solution." Tech replies.

"Right, what's got to happen is that he has to join us of his own free will without being bribed, paid or chained. And I don't see yet how we can convince him." Ace explains.

"He's not the sharpest tool in the box but the most volatile, maybe we can work that to our advantage." Tech says as Ace gets an idea from his earlier encounters with Duck

"I'm going back to talk to him, we have to assert ourselves. He's like a creme brulee, hard on the outside and soft on the inside. That's I'm going to get at." Ace replies before walking back to where Slam is sitting on Duck who has his arms folded straight beside him, unable to move them but for his wrists. Ace walks from his left and around to the front, towering over him from this position with his arms folded and with a stern, unpleased expression on his face. Duck is trying to stop fear from taking over.

"Now." Ace says. It has the same effect on Duck as if he pushed him that little bit closer to falling off a cliff. "Do you know what's going to happen next?"

Duck gulps nervously. "No, but I don't want to find out."

"No. You do not." Ace replies before crouching down to look deeply into his eyes to instil even more fear. He lowers his voice as he is closer to Duck. "I like being nice, but when I need to, I can be a real pain. How much pain do you feel right now?"

"I…" Duck tries to answer, but Ace shakes his head in quiet disappointment.

"It was a rhetorical question." Ace says. "Because for whatever answer you could have given, I can make it worse."

Duck becomes suddenly more defiant, like he can switch between being like that to total fear without any inhibition or delay.

"Like you could." Duck replies. Ace raises his fist quickly, which draws a reaction from Duck, turning his head away. Ace slowly lowers his hand in the completely silent room.

"Do you believe me now?!" He shouts menacingly.

"Yes!" Duck shouts back which brings him to tears.

"Thought so." Ace says in a normal voice. He gets back to a standing position and walk away. When he looks back at the faces of those who have watched him, they have witnessed a monster at work. He walks slowly to Lexi with an apologetic look on his face.

"I take no pride in doing that, but it had to be done." He says before moving across to Tech.

"When he starts begging for mercy, let him go, he won't run this time." Ace says before heading to the stairs where Rev is standing. Ace walks up to him but can't think of anything else to say. An exhale in his general direction is all he gives him. Ace hangs his head low and heads outside for some time to let the situation cool down. Rev wants to help Ace out just as he did with Lexi, but realises that Ace does not want to be helped, he can help himself. He looks back at the others who are all looking back at each other. No one wants to take the lead; no one dares break the stillness in the air.

"Fine." Duck says, trying to get the attention of someone. "I've learned my lesson, let me out of here, please."

He gets no immediate answer; he interprets this as no one listening to him.

"I'm not going to run away this time, honestly, not when I know how angry he is." Duck replies. Once he is finished, he feels the pressure being released from his back. Slam stands up and moves to where he is next to Tech. Duck stands up, gathers in some breath and look back at the less menacing people, who seem like the supporting cast when compared to Ace.

"You should start by apologising to Ace." Tech says normally.

"Yeah, but is there anything else I can do first?" Duck asks. "Because I don't want to face him when he's in this mood. I'll clean the floor; I'll wash the walls and sort everything out you have in the corner. But please don't make me go to him."

Tech doesn't want to be placed in the same corner as Ace, particularly when he does not have the charisma or emotion to pull off such a performance.

"Do you know any computer languages?" Tech asks.

"No." Duck replies like he doesn't need such a thing. "That's for people like you."

Tech is not offended that much, it's who he is anyway. Rev races to his side and whispers something in Tech's ear.

"Slow down." Tech says and Rev continues talking. With surprise, Tech thinks of something Duck can do.

"Okay, you can be the test subject for the combat simulator that we just finished. A couple of hours should be enough." Tech says.

"That doesn't sound so bad. Yeah! Set it up, I'm going to set a high score that none of you will beat." Duck announces. Tech didn't put in a high score or even a scoring system, nor does he think that Rev, who he suspects has secretly finished it for him, has done so. Tech moves to his computer and hits a few keys to activate the holographic projectors; it sets out a darkened platform on the ground that marks the boundary.

"Only hand to hand combat, I haven't set up any protective shielding to cope for our powers." Tech warns before starting the simulation. A single opponent appears who is the same height as Tech, dressing in full black ninja-esque outfit with glowing red eyes and armed only with fists. It advances towards Duck, who in turn raises his fists and gets on his toes like he's seen boxers do on TV.

"If you want some, well I'll give it to ya." Duck says before unleashing a fearsome strike towards the projection, which rips through his face, ending the round.

"That was easy." Duck says before two of them appear.

"I've started it easy, they won't attack in the first few rounds, but if they touch you, you lose." Tech explains. Duck spots them both and deals with them both with one punch and one kick.

"Can you skip a few levels?" Duck asks. Tech sees why not, and manually inputs the round number; 6, with only one opponent, similar to the first round.

"You again?" Duck says, readying himself. He moves in confidently and swings his right arm towards his head, but the project ducks down to dodge it and throws an uppercut right back at Duck, which ends the simulation.

"Did I lose?" Duck says.

"You got hit in the jaw, it would be broken if that was real." Tech explains.

"Okay, but at least give me another try."

"You might need some time to recover from that broken jaw." Lexi replies, stepping onto the black area.

"I don't see how you can beat him, he's faster than him." Duck says, pointing to Rev as he steps off.

"Actually he's normal human reaction and movement speed with no additional martial arts training or skills added. It has the characteristics of an average person so to say it's as fast as me is not accurate." Rev explains. Duck didn't understand much of that as he sees Lexi tighten the ribbon around her ears and ready herself.

"Just go straight to where Duck lost." Lexi says.

"Not even…" Tech asks.

"I'm up for it." Lexi replies.

"Okay, your choice." Tech replies, setting up round 6. One person appears. She steps forward, a bit timidly whilst the projection moves forward confidently. Everyone is unprepared for what happens next. The opposition throws a much towards her chest, in response, she backflips away from him, landing squat with one hand on the ground. Raised eyebrows are everywhere. She stands back up as the projection moves closer. It punches again, but she drops down low and sweeps her right leg around to hit it in the shins, which eliminates it from the sim. She finishes by using the momentum of that kick to perform a handstand before bending her legs back down to stand back up, facing the opposite direction to everyone with her arms out like she had just finished a gymnastics routine. She lowers them and looks back at everyone. This was not simply beating the level, it was done with style and finesse; something that everyone around her was unaccustomed to seeing, which causes their jaws to relax and their eyes to widen in surprise. It even briefly makes Slam's thoughts of food and hunger go away.

"That was easy." She replies, as if to rub it into Duck that little bit more.

"That's not fair." Duck complains. "It was only my first try!"

"Mine too." She says.

"But, but. How?"

"A lot of years of gymnastics, plus bit of cheerleading." She replies. No one replies back to her. "So, can you start the next one?"

"Yeah… sure." Tech replies, still trying to get over what he just saw whilst preparing himself for more of the same. The pattern continues; Lexi performs seemingly impossible acrobatic moves again and again until she tires after a few rounds. In which case she returns to staying on the ground. Even then her high agility is noticeable, able to turn much faster and move herself much more easily than Duck could even though he has a lower centre of gravity. It gets to round ten and by this time, everyone who is watching is now sitting down except for Rev, who has gone out to get some food and drinks on Slam's request, but Duck doesn't mind the prospect of food.

"I'm just going to talk to Ace." Tech says, standing up from behind the computer. "It's on auto, go as far as you want."

He turns to his right and looks back at the three of them, having fun like the previous events about 10 minutes ago were a distant memory of no consequence on the future. Tech wonders what Ace is doing up there, or even if he is up there at all. He wonders what to say, how to interact with someone who seems to be totally different to everyone else or at least, showed that he can be different. No one is anywhere in the same league when it comes to the lengths one will go to achieve something, nor is anyone so committed or as much as a presence as him. Everyone else still seems like a normal person, whereas for Ace… maybe that part seems to be withering away.

Tech's head rises above the top stair so he can see what Ace is doing, and it's not what he was expecting; Ace is meditating. He's calmly sitting on the ground, legs crossed, back straight and hands resting lightly on his knees. How can he just be like that after what happened? It's way too confusing for Tech, seeing how many different personalities come out of Ace's mouth and through his actions. He is an actor after all, but there must be some default state of being that really is Ace and not simply an act. Tech would like to know what that is so he can tell when he is acting or not. Because, right now, he can only know the answer after it has happened; and that is too late for him to know. Each time Ace does this, it changes his assumptions and perceptions made by Tech. He would really like to find out which person Ace really is.

At first, he is unwilling disturb the silence, fearing the Ace he just saw before might rear it's head and take out its displeasure on him. However, he does not have any telepathic powers that can give him the answer without him asking, so he must ask at some point. He waits about 30 seconds before he has the courage to raise his voice.

"Ace?" He asks. Initially, he doesn't get a response. Maybe he's too deep in his mind to hear anything on the outside. Tech moves as quietly as he can, which can be easily done due to the noises urban coming from below and because of the hard concrete surface not creaking under the weight of him in the way a wooden floorboard might. Tech moves to within 5 metres of him, approaching as if he was a sleeping bear.

"Ace?" Tech asks again. Ace opens his eyes and slowly turns his head to see Tech standing there, probably expecting some kind of full explanation of his actions. Without uncrossing his legs, he stands up on the spot before uncrossing them and turning around to face Tech.

"How is everyone?" Ace asks.

"Um… fine." Tech answers, surprised at the question he asked him. "Duck's still here."

"I had to do something to calm him down even if it looked brutal from the outside." Ace says calmly. "If I did nothing, he would have gone and it would have been worse. A little bad now will turn into a lot of good later."

"About that." Tech says, wanting to bring up his question. "I'm having trouble, figuring out, who you really are. I don't know when you're acting or not and it's been racking my brain this whole time."

"Does it matter? I mean, I don't physically turn into something else. I look the same don't I? It's always me doing the talking." Ace replies.

"But, if this is going to not be a temporary thing, this whole thing about being… whatever this is exactly. I just would like to know the people I'm working with." Tech says.

"You think there's another personality under me who's just the same all the time, but I'm not like that. I am whoever I need to be at whatever the time or place in order to do what is needed. If I have to be nice, I'll be nice. If I have to be mean, I'll be mean. Isn't that what we all do on a daily basis? It's not a unique thing." Ace explains.

"Yeah but, who do you prefer to be? There has to be… there's got to be an emotional state that you want to be at. Most people would like to be happy for example." Tech responds.

"I'm not this static person who's always the same because that would mean that I couldn't change. I'm always changing as a person, as is everyone else. We have to adapt to this new situation, to our new powers. So to give an explanation of who I am would only be correct at that point in time. For now, how about we concentrate on what we have to do and not who we have to be?" Ace replies. Tech nods in reply, not knowing exactly the extent of what Ace is eluding to.


	13. Sleepless

**Chapter 13 – Sleepless**

It was the worst night of sleep Lexi has experienced in her life. Super hearing combined with everyone in the same room, means she hears every repositioning of their bodies, every word spoken in their sleep and sometimes, every breath that they take. She can only get so far as napping, never into a state that could be classified as deep sleep. The super hearing activates as a defensive mechanism, being one of the few senses that is still active when asleep. Only when she is conscious she can have some control over it. She waits for the sun to come up before she gets up so that she doesn't bother the others with their sleep, a remarkable feat since they unintentionally disrupted hers. However, she notices that it is not getting brighter at the time she was expecting. She checks the time on her phone, it's the right time but it's too dark. Still, she gets up anyway out from under the sleeping bag on the cold concrete floor. Even though she knows roughly she everyone is in the room, she surveys the area to see what's happening.

Tech was the quietest out of everyone, followed surprisingly by Slam who slept on his hulking chest with his head tilted upwards; both of them only made noises when they changed positions in their sleep. Duck was a little weirder, it was either the nonsensical words he spat out of his mouth and the gross sounds of him sucking on something. It made her want to be sick at several points during the night. Rev was like coiled spring al night, slowing being compressed before he moved around with a burst of speed like popping popcorn in the cocoon of his sleeping back. If he tossed and turned, he would roll over one full revolution. Over the course of the night, she suspects that he moved nearly 100 metres around the room, hitting the walls and sometimes other people. Ace had an interrupted sleep, but of his own choosing.

For several hours after everyone supposedly went to sleep, Ace went into the simulator and performed for as long as he could; fighting the holograms with both his body and his sword but not his laser power, fearing he might damage the building or even hit someone. In any case, he holds all of the high scores because of the lengthy session he put in, which also means he went to sleep in the centre of the simulator floor from exhaustion. How committed is he to this vision Zadavia has put forward? She wonders. Whether he is entirely gullible or well prepared, the effort he has exerted is unquestioned. Since there are no kitchen facilities inside, Lexi must venture outside if she wants some food. However, she feels so tired that standing up in itself is a great effort on her part. Once she does this, she can hear Rev getting up also from across the room. When she sees him, even in this dark light, she can tell that he is sore just from the way he walks towards her with a slight limp in his left leg. Lexi covers her mouth with her hand to suppress a yawn that might wake everyone up.

"You're up early." Rev whispers.

"I haven't slept all night." Lexi replies.

"I haven't slept that well either." Rev comments. "I keep hitting the walls for some reason during the night. I'm not sleepwalking am I?"

"Nah." Lexi says before suppressing another yawn. "You just turn around in your sleeping bag as fast as you can run. But it's not as bad as me, I heard literally everything in the room and it kept me up all night."

"That is worse." Rev notes, at least he got an hours peace on average in between each waking. "Maybe I'll go out get some food whilst you stay here and… well, I was going to say go to sleep but you can't and…"

Rev decides it would be easier simply to go rather than dig himself out of his own conversation.

"I'll just go." Rev says as he zips out of the room and onto the rooftop where he finds a fridge has been placed there during the night. Initially it's rounded edges confuse him, what is this doing here? Alongside it are several watertight plastic containers with food supplies that do not need to be refrigerated, some of the contents he can see in the partially transparent sides. Still feeling confused about the origins of these items he walks over to the fridge and opens the main door and finds that it is fully stacked with everything they could want. What he really wants must be in one of these plastic containers. He reaches up to the top of the first of three piles of 5 and rips off the top to see what's inside. His eyes widen at what he sees. He places the box on the ground and takes out one of the cardboard boxes that's twice as small as a cereal box but just as heavy.

"12. Different. Types of birdseed! Yes! Oh thank you whoever did this!" Rev exclaims gleefully before realising where this has all come from. It seems Zadavia was not kidding when she said that she would provide everything they needed. It does matter, he pokes a hole in the side of the packaging before dumping a potion of it's contents to inside his beak before consuming it like he has not eaten in days. He continues to eat straight from the packet, unaware that Lexi has been watching him. After his fourth beakful of birdseed, he notices her just standing there, at which point he freezes like a statue.

"I promise I didn't know about this until I just got up here. How could I hide a fridge?" Rev nervously asks.

"I didn't hear a fridge being placed over here," Lexi says. "Nor these containers."

"However it is done, Zadavia must really want us to be taken care of with all this food that could last for weeks if we use it right." Rev explains. "Birdseed?"

"No thanks." Lexi replies. "What else is there?"

In a flash, Rev unstacks the containers so that they are all on the ground before opening the lids on each one of them to see what is inside.

"Everything one could reasonably want in terms of food and drink, and judging from the copious amount of birdseed that is here I guess Zadavia know what kinds of food we like which means I guess she knows every single thing about us…" Rev explains before running through his own deepest secrets that she probably knows about. With a shudder, he returns to the present time. "So, there's the food." He says awkwardly.

"I just need a soundproof booth that I can sleep in." Lexi moans as the steps becomes more and more inviting to sleep on.

"I can take a look for one if you want." Rev offers.

"Please." Lexi replies desperately, struggling to stay awake in the darkened exterior. Rev zips away and quickly looks up the nearest soundproof booth in the city on the computers before returning to Lexi who has lay down on the ground, once again going to the futile act of falling back to sleep.

"Lexi, wake up." Rev says, bending down to whisper in her ear. She opens her eyes again and looks to her left to see Rev standing beside her. "Come on."

He bends down and tries to pull her up by the arm, once he does so, she helps herself wearily to an upright position.

"Hold on." Rev instructs, locking his arms around her waist so she does not slip out whilst in the air. Just as he is about to take off, he realises how cumbersome and difficult this is turning out to be. Rev thinks that there must be an easier way to do this, but can't think of an idea for himself; he needs a second opinion. He lies her back down onto the ground gently, noticing that she has gone to sleep in his arms. He races back inside to Tech and couches down, tapping him on the shoulder.

"Tech." Rev whispers. He does not wake up; he's sleeping extremely well compared to everyone else. Rev grabs both of his shoulders and lightly shakes him. It manages to open his eyes.

"Who's there?" Tech asks.

"It's me, I need your help because Lexi hasn't slept all night due to her super hearing and I wanted to help but I wanted to take her out to a soundproof booth in the city but I think there has to be a better way than doing that so I need your help." Rev whispers. Tech is startled, it's too early for a crisis.

"Hold on, one minute." Tech replies.

"Oh thank you, thank you, thank you." Rev praises before running back out to Lexi who's sitting up on the stairs watching Rev trying to get some help.

"It's okay, Tech's going to help." Rev says before rushing back to tech, who's dragging himself out of the sleeping bag. "Any ideas?"

"If everything I need is there, a few minutes." Tech says, having already got detailed plans inside of his head. Rev goes back to Lexi with the news.

"It'll just be a few minutes Lexi just hold it together." Rev explains. "I'll take you inside."

"It's okay, I'll stay out here… for a…" Lexi replies before she gets too tired to speak, making her fall back to sleep. Wanting to do whatever is needed to help, he rushes back to Tech who has begun to gather the materials needed to build whatever he has planned in his head.

"What are you making?" Rev asks.

"Noise cancelling headphones." Tech explains.

"But they won't work, she can hear everything; even though that!" Rev worriedly replies.

"Off the shelf one's won't work, but these won't be off the shelf. They'll have to contain some of the most powerful electromagnets in order to cancel out even the most minute and distant sounds." Tech explains. "Let's get to work."

Over the next few minutes, Tech asks Rev to give him a certain material and tech uses his wide variety of tool to begin realising his quickly made vision. Like a surgeon and nurse team, Rev assists Tech whilst watching his hands and arms move so precisely and quickly at the same time. With his hand-eye coordination, he really could be a surgeon if robots didn't do most of the surgical work. Just as Tech estimated, he finishes his work in just over 3 minutes. The finished product looks like two grey oversized earphones with thick cables sticking out of the top and entering into a separate external power pack.

"It's not perfect but it should work." Tech says, handing them over to Rev who takes them over to the sleepless rabbit.

"Put these on." Rev insists. Tiredly, she does so. She notices the silence as Rev tries to speak to her. Lexi activates her super hearing whilst Rev continues to talk right in front of her. It's such a relief to her, it almost bring her to tears as Tech walks up to her to see how his handiwork is working. She takes them off and suddenly all the sounds come back.

"This is amazing. Thank you, both of you." Lexi says gratefully before she can finally do what she has wanted all night. "I'm going to sleep."

Lexi stands up and walks across to where her sleeping bag is and gets herself inside before placing the silencing earphones inside her ears, sending her to a much quieter place where sleep is possible. Over to the side, Duck sits inside his cocoon of warmth; watch this unfold with disdain as this affair has woken him up. He pretended to be asleep the whole time because he figures that whilst Lexi is tired, she is more likely to be aggressive towards him. And considering what he saw happen to Rev last night, Duck thinks that some serious personal damage could be done if he wasn't careful. Only moving his eyes, he checks to make sure that the noise cancelling earphones are working before he escapes from the synthetic materials to berate the others.

"That was helpful." Duck says sarcastically across to Rev and Tech who are both cleaning up things on the table. Curiously, neither of them detect and hint of sarcasm and interpret this as a compliment. Duck moves to approach them both.

"That was the intention." Rev replies.

"No, you woke me up!" Duck accuses them.

"I'm sorry if we were too loud but Lexi really needs to go to sleep." Rev defends timidly compared to Duck's strong conviction.

"But you should of thought of the rest of us, you're going to wake up… one, two three people, in order to help just one." Duck replies. "This is what you've got to do in order to help the whole team, not just the only girl which, let's face it, are attracted to. So, you're going to bow down to all of her wishes to get her love. My advice, don't, you'll just kill each other over something so meaningless." Duck explains strongly. Rev and Tech may have various levels of friendship with her, with Rev being dangerously close the line where one is more than a friend; the only thing keeping from going over the edge is his belief that Lexi should be with Ace. While they internally defend against his arguments, they catch a glimpse of someone else who has also been woken up, and is not too happy about it. Duck looks a little bit to his right and gets one huge shock. Immediately he wants to hide. He quacks outside of the room to get away.

"That's what I expected." Ace exclaims, not unhappy about being woken up, but more displeased about Duck's words rather than their loudness.

"What's with all this?" Duck says from the outside in surprise at all of the containers including the fridge. All three of them can hear him.

"It's a lot of food Zadavia sent for us." Rev says to Ace.

"What have you done, you didn't leave anything?!" Duck shouts. "How is this even possible? There's not even enough room inside to fit everything inside your body!"

The three of them run up the stairs to see what's happened. Slam is on the ground along with all of the boxes, opened and empty. The fridge is also bare, the internal show complete whiteness on the inside as if it was brand new, and never had any food or drink inside.

"I feel like I missed out on something." Ace says, looking at the fact there is a fridge out here with what looked to be all of the food they would need, and yet it's all gone in one single sitting.


	14. Electric Feel

**Chapter 14 – Electric Feel**

With Lexi finally in the comfort of sleep, safe from noise and now in some distant dream and more food delivered and consumed, the rest of the team set about figuring out what they need to do. There are several different ideas, which can be classed into two distinct sets. The first being to make what they don't have and the second to go and get what they already have; things from home, from before the meteor. Each person has a varied level of attachment to their normal self, indeed, that was under 24 hours ago but it feels like a week or more. Everyone had some noticeable attachment with their identity, but Ace is not like that. He carried on as if he was born yesterday, with nothing sentimental he wanted to bring to this large open room they now have been told to call home. After an hour or so, it became clear that Ace had no other intentions than to work hard in the simulator and improve his combat skills until he could no longer do so. This is a work ethic and determination that is unmatched by anyone, even when his body could not be at that same level. After 90 minutes, whilst Duck is out collecting his personal belongings, he collapses on the floor; not of his own choosing, but of exhaustion.

"Ace! Come on, drink some water." Rev says whilst panicking, his super speed means he's the first to the scene with a bottle of water in his hand what Ace was using. Ace is breathing in and out too heavily and rapidly for him to take on any fluids or solids. Ace shakes his head in refusal. Tech quickly wants to blame himself for letting Ace push himself too far since the simulator is his invention and since he is meant to be the intelligent one, he should notice such things like this. In truth, this is the first sign of weakness that Ace has shown all morning.

"Ace, you're not using the simulator again today." Tech tries to say, he doesn't want to sound like an angry parent barking instructions to a child, but it's how he phrases it.

"I can't move my legs." Ace weakly exclaims. Both of his legs don't respond in the the normal fashion, they feel heavy, revealing their true weight when they can't carry themselves.

"That's the lactic acid in your muscles," Tech replies. "You need to rest."

Rest sounds like an offensive word to Ace, or like something that isn't in Ace's vocabulary; what is this 'rest' you speak of? However, it's what he needs and what he accepts he needs. Rev initially tries to lift Ace onto his feet by himself, but he is quickly joined by Tech who manages to complete the task. Ace still can't bend his knees, and, therefore, walk. Slam comes and picks him off the ground and quickly places him lying on his back on one of the couches like he was nothing. Slam's strength is underestimated, even though, his upper body strength can be easily seen.

"I need to get fitter Tech; faster, stronger, more agile than anyone." Ace confidently remarks. "I need to master this sword, I need to control my laser vision and make it more powerful."

"Maybe you need to ease off a little, there's no point in hurting yourself over this. This is pushing yourself over the edge." Tech replies concernedly.

"No point in doing anything less than 100%, life and death…" Ace begins to explain just before the power goes out.

"Tech?" Ace asks.

"I don't know if there is a backup generator in the building." Tech says, waiting in silence for a few seconds hoping that it will be restored promptly; darkness remains. "No, there isn't."

Strangely, Lexi also wakes up despite her noise cancelling headphones being powered by a remote power pack. A loud yawn makes everyone aware of her awoken state.

"It's an EMP," Tech notes. "Nothing else could down both the power grid and remote power sources in one go."

"What time is it?" Lexi asks tiredly.

"But an EMP blast that big to reach us up here would cover several blocks, it would have to be extremely powerful." Tech says as he runs over to the window and looks down at the ground for any sign of such a device. The power returns inside the building, reverting to the state it was a few seconds ago. "The epicentre has to be very close."

"I'm on it." Rev says before darting out of the room to search for the epicentre. Tech rushes back to his computers.

"I have to reboot these computers one by one, it's going to take some time." Tech announces.

"Can you replace the batteries in this thing?" Lexi asks from across the room. Instantly Tech stops beginning to reboot the computers and gathers a spare power pack before rushing over to Lexi to swap the damaged one for a working one.

"Get some sleep." Tech advises.

"Thanks." She replies.

Tech runs back to his computers to reboot them all as fast as possible. A minute later he receives a distressing alert, which causes his head to fall briefly into his hands. He stands back up again to tell Ace and Slam the bad news.

"Duck's jetpack malfunctioned while in the air." Tech warns. "It's equipped with an accelerometer that activates the parachutes when it falls to fast without power. I have his location, if only Rev was back. Rev comes flying back in a few seconds after he says this.

"I searched every building within a 5 block radius and I could not find anything that even remotely resembled a large flux compression generator or a supercapacitor bank." Rev explains quickly. "But there's something happening down on the streets which looks like a riot but there's very little police down there I think it's going to turn violent we need to stay in here until it dies down."

Tech looks back down onto the street to see if there are many people on the ground.

"It looks like a gang, a large one." Tech says. he estimates the number to be around 150 people marching down the street in no orderly formation.

"Gangs?" Ace asks. he wants some action but also is secretly curious.

Being more decisive than he's ever been so far. "We have to pick our battles, Duck's out in the city and we have to rescue him; that has to be our priority here." Tech says, being more decisive than he's ever been so far.

"I'll find him and bring him back." Rev says before leaving the building again. Tech runs across to the piles of materials and finds the energy weapons he made earlier. He adds the crucial power devices to each one in order for them to function before offering one to each person.

"Just in case." Tech replies.

"We have to wake up Lexi." Ace realises.

"This is mainly to make me feel a bit safer, the chances of them breaking in and reaching this floor are about 450,000 to 1." Tech calculates. "They won't get inside."

There is an uneasy silence as everyone waits around to see what might happen next. 5 seconds later, the power goes out again.

"This isn't good." Tech says.

Slam makes a surprisingly witty remark about the power going out for a second time.

"I said that for myself rather than as a literal statement that everyone should pay attention to." Tech replies in the darkness. Slam grunts in acknowledgement.

"What are you saying Lexi?" Ace asks from the couch, trying to listen in as hard as he can to her quiet murmurings which are no. Ace tilts his head to the left and can see that she's hearing something, probably from below. Lexi doesn't reply, she's concentrating only on what the others can't hear. She quietly says to herself what they are saying as the power comes back on.

"We run this zone now, we have the power to control your electricity, we are in control. The police have been driven out, they cannot return nor will they want to. Life will be the same, there will be no extortion, racketeering or taxing by us to you, you may live out your lives however you choose. Go into each building and repeat this message to everyone. You 8 stay here…" Lexi says out loud, before stopping when she realises the message is finished. She looks back up at Ace when she realises that he's been listening in on her.

"What should we do?" Lexi asks tiredly.

"Not sure right now." Ace replies as Tech goes back to rebooting the computer system. "But I think we need to get Rev and Duck back as quickly as possible. Since Lexi is too tired and you won't let me, Tech, you're going to have to find them."

"Rev won't be affected by the electromag…" Tech says before realising that he might. "He probably isn't able to locate us using his own powers."

Tech thinks of the communication device he gave to Rev yesterday but assumes that it must be unusable because Rev was in the room when the EMP went off. With an overwhelming sense of responsibility, he knows that he is the only one who can find them; because the jetpacks won't either fit on Slam or even able to lift him off the ground at full throttle. Tech really thinks that his technology preparedness is very far behind what it should. All of his electronics are in disarray, more than half of the team is unable to function or missing; he feels somehow responsible for all of this. That he could not prepare better for such an outcome with the right equipment. All he has are a set of jetpacks, a large computer system, 2 quantum communicators, 4 energy blaster rifles and a drone with no specific purpose. Tech grabs one of the jetpacks and puts it around his back before going back to everyone else.

"Slam, you're in charge." Tech says. Ace is surprised, his mind is still okay, but Slam is the only unaffected person left inside of the room. Tech goes up the stairs to the roof, however, he's not anxious to get away; he's wondering what this is all becoming, what is the world doing? He goes to the edge and looks around him, seeing the city not looking very different from what he remembers from a few days ago. The major difference is above the ground; the sky. Covered in this blackness which almost completely blocks out the sun, more light is coming from down below from artificial sources rather than from above. With an indignant sigh, he grasps the two controls of the jetpacks and takes off to the last known location of where Duck's jetpack failed.

From somewhere on the ground, Rev shoots up to meet Tech and pulls him down from the sky.

"What are you doing?" Tech shouts. Rev does not listen, only pulling him down harder. Tech turns off the jetpack and lets Rev take control. Rev touches down with Tech in hands, where they find Duck slumped against a back wall.

"We have to hide." Rev says.

"Why?" Tech asks.

"Because there's people all around us, with weapons, and marching, and seriousness!" Duck exclaims.

"Okay, how are we going to get out of this?" Tech asks.

"I was hoping that is what you were going to help us with." Rev replies.

"I'll just restart your jetpack and we'll leave." Tech replies, thinking it wouldn't be that easy otherwise Rev would have thought of that earlier.

"But we'll get shot at, we have to stay here. I could fly as fast as I can, but I might be hit." Rev says.

"Why would you even need to be worried?" Tech says. "You're too fast."

A coarse dink sound appears on the ground, something metallic sliding on the ground; a squashed soft drink can that lands at Duck's feet. He picks it up and examines it.

"Hmm, it's a…"

It starts beeping, which makes his hands glow in orange energy, disintegrating the can into molten metal before evaporating in his hands.

"Freaks!"

"Who's there?!" Duck shouts. Smoke begins to fill the backstreet as canisters roll down the road with smoke spewing out of one side.

"What should we do?" Duck says nervously across to the other two.

"Run!" Rev shouts before they all take off down the side of the street, not looking back at the orange smoke cloud that grows behind them.

"That gas is incredibly painful, one breath and it burns your lungs." Tech explains whilst running away with Duck. Rev is waiting on the next corner, trying to find a way out.

"If we can restart your jetpack then we can fly out of here." Tech explains.

"Then do it!" Duck shouts back.

"Rev!" Tech shouts. He runs straight back to the other two in an instant. "Help start Duck's Jetpack!"

"I don't know what I need to do. Does it need to be jump started or have components replaced?" Rev asks nervously whilst running at a few percentage points of his potential speed so he stays with his companions.

"Just fly him out of here!" Tech shouts back, skipping the fixing and going straight to just getting out of here. However, Duck has seemingly tripped over and is not getting up in a hurry. His limbs are all contracted; his hands are balled into fists, his legs are curled up and his arms are stretched out wide. Tech stops briefly to see the orange smoke coming closer and closer.

"Rev! Duck's fallen over!" Tech shouts. Rev turns around and heads back in the other direction towards the burning smoke; he knows that he is fast enough to save Duck. He runs back, grabs his shoulders and gets ready to pull him away at speed but touching Duck's body is like touching a live wire, he succumbs to the same fate as Duck; unable to get up from the ground. The smoke is racing over both of them and tech knows there is no way to enter the smoke without a gas mask or else the pain would immobilise him. He opens up his jetpack and gets ready to fly, he presses the accelerator to fly away but the electronic control unit fails, catches fire and explodes. The fuel tank does not explode, being protected by an exotic hybrid alloy flexible tank that acts like a toughened balloon that holds the pressurised gas. The fuel being released into the combustion area does ignite, blowing the bottom half of the jetpack to pieces, shooting all sorts of shrapnel downwards, lifting Tech slightly off the ground. He touches back down in pain and, therefore, unable to balance himself. He shouts in pain as his right ankle tendon has been severed by a piece of shrapnel. Tech falls to the ground, incapable of balancing on his one good leg from the shaky landing. He holds his ankle in pain, acutely aware of the orange smoke relentlessly rolling along the street. Just before the smoke envelopes him, he sees that his ankle has that green aura around like, like when he was dead. It's healing itself back together, the wound is closing up and gone, right before Tech's eyes. He can't see the full process as his lungs burn and eyes water, like eating a whole ghost chilli pepper, making him experience these burning sensations without actually being on fire. Through the water in his eyes, several gas-mask wearing assailants walk slowly through the smoke as if unperturbed by its presence. Two people come and grab the coyote and stand him up before pulling him along with his feet dragging along the ground.

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><p><strong>(AN 6 Feb 2015): Sorry for these past few chapters taking much longer than usual to upload. Everything is a big effort and I haven't had the motivation to write like I want to. But your support helps immensely in just being able to keep going, every single one of you. The reason why I uploaded this now was directly caused by an anonymous reviewer; so thanks whoever you are, I have updated it very soon, probably sooner than you expected.**


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